Professor Pirate
by Bartholomew Ramsbottom III
Summary: Why hasn't anyone dropped an old hand at adventure into One Piece yet? Always with these hip kids and the rap music and cocky attitudes and the overpowered protagonists and blatant self inserts with their overpowered devil vegetables and their inexplicable love triangles and the uncomplicated villains and the going though all the arcs with no changes and the eyewatering unholy smu-
1. Prologue

**From the Author:**

 _First a couple disclaimers:_ #1: _I don't own One Piece, that honour belongs to Eiichiro Oda._ #2: _This might be re-written at a later date if I receive enough information and opinions on what would be best to change._

 **Prologue**

Sitting in the vast garden outside his house somewhere in northern Europe we find Prof. Siegfried E. R. Thorson.

He is a tall, long limbed man, in his later years. Still with some of the muscle earned in his youth. Green eyed, with a well maintained haircut and a lovingly cultivated beard, both of which have grayed in a dignified manner from their original red, save a few remaining wisps of colour.

He is a man wearing a fine but comfortable suit with leather patches sown onto the sleeves. A precious possession for many years.

He is a man with a large number of accomplishments, and he views all of them with pride well deserved. Especially his still beautiful wife and their seven children, four boys and three girls. Most of whom are fully grown and starting their own families.

He is a man that has written novels, learned of the arts both spiritual and martial, and traveled though many lands. He teaches classes for a wide variety of subjects at the local collage

He is a man who is enjoying a fine smoke of a herb of some sort from his favourite pipe, and one of his favourite books on the mythologies of old Norway.

He is a man that never leaves the house without his childhood dirk on his person; a long, sword-like dagger.

He is a man who has seen almost everything this world has to offer, and enjoyed most of it.

He is a man that is lounging in a lawn chair, thinking that he is content with his life and would wish to just stay at home and rest. Retired from the adventures of youth. Believing himself to be complete.

He is a man who has taken a moment to admire the last remaining blues in the evening sky.

He is a man who has noticed that the sky seems to be closer then he feels it should.

He is a man who has realized that he is somehow falling upwards.

He is a man who now thinks that the sky definitely did not feel like it was this wet the last time he was in it.

He is a man trying to not drown in the biggest expanse of water he has ever seen.

He is a man who has noticed a large pair of eyes attached to a larger maw moving towards him uncomfortably quickly.

He is a man who has somehow managed to stab the Leviathan in the eye and swam away as fast as he could towards what looked to be a large ship.

He is a man who has climbed aboard the ship by piercing the wood with his dirk, and found it to actually look like a giant goldfish that seems to be manned entirely by chefs. All of whom do not seem to appreciate his renovations to their ship.

He is a man who is very confused.

He is a man who has been taken to the wild, crazy, insane, unbelievably uncomfortably adventurous world of ONE PIECE.

And he really doesn't want to be there.


	2. The Professor Invades the Baratie

Chapter One: The Professor invades the Baratie

The day on the sea-bound chef's ship Baratie had started like any other. Food prep began to sort out the ingredients and stack up the dishes that would be required for the day's menu. Cooks pulled on their uniforms and went to their respective stations to began heating up the stoves, while others once more checked certain dishes that had been cooking for days. Waiters, what few were left anyhow, set the tables and marked reservations for guests. And some others went to tend to the odd fish shaped ship. Two members of the cookery crew climbed into the ship's twin crows nests relive their companions on the last night's watch. Soon, people started to come in, starting as a slow trickle that turned into a small stream as the morning progressed. Business had been consistent if not very large.

The morning watch was taken by two men, one was thin and tall, the was other very broad and strong looking, they were cousins of unidentifiable relation from somewhere in the North-West-mid-South end middle of the East blue. Both sped up the rigging as if their lives depended on it, yet some how, a full half hour had passed before they reached the top. And the men that they were reliving gave them the same admonishment that they had given them since they first took watch on the ship:

"Linguine!" Yelled one.

"Fettuccine!" Bellowed the other.

"Why the hell do you always take so long to get up here?!" They both shouted.

And both of them bellowed the same response in the same thick accent they had given for years:

"Ay! Don't worry 'bout it! It's how 'ya get there, not when! 'Ya gotta' 'preciate the journey of life in'stedda worrying 'bout how soons' 'yer gonna' get to were it ends!"

Before simultaneously waving their arms in the same dismissive gesture and muttering about how no one understood life as they did.

And so, as changing into the watch did nothing to keep them entertained, they continued to do the same as they had done every day for every morning: Hurling insults at each other, so as to better continue family tradition and thus improve themselves.

At least until they saw the madly thrashing Sea King. Whereupon they began spewing a steady stream of vaguely understandable, but still offending, expletives at themselves and the crew.

" 'Sea King offa' 'th'&#*^ starboard bow!'

'Youse' fellas might wanna' H&*6Ing see dis one!'

Whada' th' pi*#l d'ya mean 'so what'?'

'It's twice th'size of the Fl!&#in ship!'

'Well yer' mother was a D&% $e! 'So what' about'a that Patty!?'

'It's a angry one! Why'a the hell is it'a bleedin' in it's'a Y*&K# eye!?

'No I'm not gonna'a tell 'ya what a D&% $e is!

'Sen'd'a out th'F&*#in' cannons! It's'a wounded! And We're'a gona' be makin'a lot'sa steak tonight!'

'Why don't 'ya come up 'ere and'a say'a that to my face'a then eh? Eh? Or are'a those muscles just for distractin'a people from'a your F*#%In' face?!'

'Wait, Screw th'F&*#in' cannons! Jus'a go get Sanji!, or Chef Zeff! Or F*&in' anyone!"

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Some time later, just after the Baratie and crew had finished securing a large supply of meat for the next few weeks. Just as the battered second watchman had managed to finish up singing drunken tunes arm in arm with the equally battered Patty. And just as the customers had been finally been placated from their impromptu stampede. A prep man came up from the underbelly of the ship soaking wet and carrying an almost equally soaked piece of frozen meat, walked out into the main floor on the best carpet, and calmly announced:

"Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, but our hull seems to have been punctured, and we are presently taking on water at an astounding rate. So sorry for the inconvenience."

He then apparently remembered that he had swallowed about a half pool's worth of water in a valiant but sadly doomed imitation of Thor to drink away the ocean's ebb, and promptly drowned in the middle of the dining room. Panic and hysteria resumed among the customers as about a dozen women screamed at the exact same time and pitch; shattering most of the glassware, not to mention the windows. Men began declaring Brotherhood and allegiance to the king of The Table over by the window with the Chandelier, and some announced their intentions to rebel to reclaim glory of the long repressed Clans of The Far North Dining room Table by the Other Window. And The two vaguely related cousins started yelling something about them being boarded mixed in with another incomprehensible tide of frothing curses.

The concept of being boarded in the middle of the breakfast rush was not a new one to the chef crew, just one that was seen as vaguely annoying and very rude. Most pirates waited until at least after lunch to invade after all.

And so, A full two thirds of the staff scrambled to collect any weaponry that could be conceivably called that, and promptly rushed outdoors. Bristling as though a grumpy forest made of giant knives, forks, guns, and, oddly enough; spoons, had decided to go and take out the rather excessive logging, and swarmed to the direction of were the most curses were being directed. Leaving the remaining third to attempt to calm the guests once more and hopefully take care of the oddly singular punctures to the hull, as well as the water, which was merrily rushing in at an ever increasing rate, heedless of the many cries of despair hurled at it. There were only a scant few left in the kitchen to attempt to save the food

And it was at the afore mentioned collection point of the astonishing expletives that the many angry chefs gathered, posed for invasion and waiting for their hated enemy to climb over the railing. And they waited. And waited. And waited.

And waited still.

As the cursing finally died, it seemed to take all other sounds down with it. Leaving only the gentle lapping of the waves at the sides of the ship. As well as a sort of odd grunting, crunching, stabbing noise that was slowly getting closer. Now mesmerised, the once enraged crew stood strangely entranced by the small sound. None moved.

Then, as the sound reached it's zenith, a long straight blood coated dagger was thrust into the deck, held by a long straight blood coated arm. And thus the trance ended as the crew suddenly remembered that they were supposed to be angry. Bristling their cutlery and posing menacingly once more. Curses floated down from the crows nests once more.

What they had expected to find at the other end of the arm was a evil face, something that they could charge at immediately in defence of their beloved home and ship. A face that would be followed by a great number of similar faces to be engaged with in righteous combat. Many of them would not live to see the sunset, but their memories would live on in the hearts and minds of those that followed them into the golden gates of chefdom aboard the good vessel Baratie!

On the other hand, what they did not expect was to see one soaked, gasping, red-faced, and oddly well dressed old man pull himself slowly onto the deck. Not knowing what to do or expect anymore, the crew's collective minds froze over like they had just seen a man guzzle down a hundred year old red wine at room temperature while eating deep fried chicken. Suffice to say they were stunned. And so they continued to be as the old man coughed up water onto the finely scrubbed deck before slowly stretching out his limbs, one. By. One. By. One. By. One. Then sitting down and, over a period of what seemed like hours, drew in a breath. Then, Ever. So. Slowly. He let it out, and sat down against the railing towards them with his eyes closed, mumbling something about how hard it was going to be to get blood out of his suit again. And so they remained for some time, silently facing each other. A Crew of cooks wielding giant flatware, and an old man, soaked and half covered in blood with a very large knife

A few staff members interrupted their unknowing staring contest by bursting though the side door carrying a large hose and quickly putting the end point over the railing were the old man resided. Then just as quickly running back into the restaurant. The old man's eyes snapped open just as the hose men ran in. He quickly looked around in a state of panic, struggling to his feet and wildly looking around as his arms seemingly flailed around in what looked like an impromptu fighting stance, tightening his grip on the dagger-sword in the process. The chefs tensed once again and a few of them half-heartedly posed menacingly, most likely out of a lack of any other options. The man's hands then reached his coat, somehow avoiding stabbing himself in the process, as he patted it down, suddenly relaxing as he evidently found what had made him so concerned: Reaching his free hand into his coat, he grinned like a man that had just remembered that it was his birthday as he bought out an old looking pipe, a tightly secured pouch of wonderfully scented herbs , and, somehow, a large leather bound book. He smiled fondly at these objects as he relaxed. Then, two confused offences to the dignity of the ship floated down from on high to his ears, and he looked up. And for the first time that day saw an array of chefs that were attempting to impose upon him an aura of menace with over sized flatware.

The Professor groaned and covered his face with his hand. Then spoke aloud in a rich bass voice; a weary full sentence making it intact to the ears of the very much confused chefs:

"Not giant spoons again.."

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 ** _Author's words:_**

Wow. I know that almost everyone says this as soon as they get some reviews and favourites. But I really do mean this; I did not expect to receive this much attention so soon. Just to let you guys know, specifically Kaori and See-me-clearly, When I saw your reviews I just had to let out a peal of excited laughter. And not just giggles or anything, full blown gale force guffaws. I hope this new chapter in Prof. Thorson's reluctant adventure makes you as happy as much as your reviews made me.


	3. Kids These Days

**Prof. P: Chapter two: Two old men bound over how awful today's youth are.**

Professor Siegfried E. R. Thorson carefully massaged the bridge of his nose with the hand that held his bloody dirk as he leaned against the railing of the Goldfish/ship and attempted to make sense of what was happening to him. All he had wanted to do was relax and rest himself after a long week teaching hundreds of students and valiantly striving to remember their names and individually physiologies. He had looked forward to having his dinner, (steak, as it turned out) having his read, having his smoked herbs, and later having his wife… Tell him how her day went. It _was_ Friday after all.

Now here he was, improbably flung upwards into the middle of an ocean whose currents felt extremely strange to him, rushed at by what at the time looked to be a giant set of teeth affixed to eyes, and now he was face to face with a forest of giant flatware.

" ' _And here I thought I was too old for this crap_ ' " He thought to himself, stopping his ministrations and looking at them more closely " _'I mean look at these guys, they're trying so hard to be intimidating, if they tried any harder I swear I'd see the word 'menacing' floating around them_.' " Shaking his head, The Professor straightened up, brushed some of the excess water and blood droplets off his suit, somehow stashed his pipe, herbs and book back into his suit, and asked:

"Would you kindly put down the oversized flatware and direct me to the Capta- no, Head Chef, I suppose, of this ship? I'd very much like to find out just were on the seas I am and where the closest washroom and laundry is. This suit isn't cheep and neither is my time. …I would also recommend getting an exorcist, your Crow's nests seem to be haunted by some rather over expressive fiends."

The Chefy crew slipped in their posing, some literally, what few brave hopes of a grand battle dashed like so many broken dishes on a tiled floor, curse the maker of them, as this soggy old man asked what few costumers had asked twice; to see Chef Zeff! Though they all loved and respected the old cook, it was not uncommon for the crew to wake up and find themselves in a cold sweat at their imagined prospect of just what would happen if they even dared to waste some food by chance of burning or some careless spillage. Not to mention Sanji! And now here stood this old graying man, likely the one that was behind the panic that had shaken up their morning routine, and by the look of his long dagger, was looking to have been the one that had viciously struck holes in the hull of their precious home, quietly complaining about his suit and asking to see the man that had inspired them to live the life they had chosen. It infuriated them.

Two members of the group pushed them selves forward: One was a somewhat portly man with what the Professor guessed was a brown mullet underneath his toque, as well a pair of extremely dark, small, round sunglasses. Professor Thorson wondered if those would really be a help for cooking. The second was.. Well he was a man. Though his body shape, uniform, and presence made him look like the result of Popeye marrying his spinach. Both men seemed to have some position of authority with the other crew members, though the Prof. Guessed that they were neither of them the man he wished to speak to, especially as the one with the Popeye -esque look looked like he had recently had the run of it and seemed either punch drunk or just regular drunk. They looked upon him with some contempt and yet there was still a strange sense of them trying to appease him. The bruised one, though he spoke in a slightly slurred pattern, started in on a small speech as the portly one, upon seeing the state his companion was in, slapped himself:

"Hello Shur! And welcome to The _Baratie_ , the finest restront on the seas! We are currently exshperencing some technical problems with the hull, to tu shomeone puncturing the wood. But! Ash you cans see, we already have the problems taking care of. You doo shee the hoses right? _Carne, phssit, did we put one pipe out or are there three?_ But not to whorry, we can still accommodate yous if youse show wish. Do you have a reshervation?"

As the Popeye man bravely sloshed his way through what The Prof. Imagined to be a practiced response to calm potential customers in the event of the ship taking damage, and Thorson responded, thinking of the evening he had just been whisked away from:

"No, thank you, but I've just had my dinner and it was quite…" Pausing, He looked up at the bight morning sky, briefly noting the two men on high staring down at him. Then pulled his jacket open, drew from it's depths a shiny watch attached to a chain, flipped it open and stared. And then looked at the sky again. And then looked back at his watch. And to the skies. And to his watch. Sky, watch, sky, watch, sky, watch. This went on for some time, some of the crew watching sky watch sk- err, him, began to feel pains in their necks for the repetitions, as their bodies silently pleaded with the old man; " _Please just find what you're looking for already! Please!_ " And eventually, he soon did. As he finally closed his eyes and let out a quiet sigh that suddenly coincided with the old ship creaking at the water's constant, yet invisible push and pull. Forever confined to the thing that was slowly wearing it down and battering it apart _._ He opened his eyes and, as the sharper eyed of the crew noticed, looked not at the time, but at the backside of the watch's cover. Then, he closed the watch and placed it back in the safe confines of his somehow dry on the inside suit. And continued.

"Sorry about that. Ahem. No, I just require contact with your superior, provided that he is not too busy at the moment, as well as the use of your facilities. I assume that, as a restaurant of this calibre, you would have a wash for your uniforms in the name of hygiene?" He asked. Once again, the staff was exhausted for an answer after the flabbergasting change in direction the old man took. Before the half drunk half punch drunk man could attempt to answer again, he was quickly shoved aside by his embarrassed friend. The one apparently named 'Carne', who began speaking in his companion's, 'absence'.

"Yeah, sorry for the trouble old man, Patty here isn't usually so hammered. It mostly happens when he gets into an argument with The Cousins. 'Course, we all feel like drinkin' after an argument with them. Heh ha…. never heard so many family members insulted at once. And most of the time, we don't even know what they're saying. But as for whether or not you'll get to speak to Chef Zeff-" Here he was shoved off into a wall by the one named Patty, who promptly began assaulting The Prof.'s sense of proper grammer with his slurring speech patterns.

"You can't usesh them waashs rums withshout buying shomething. May I eshcort you too a table?"

Affronted by the abrupt change, The Prof. attempted to adapt to the diffrence and not get disctacted by the other crewmen trying to pry Carne out of the wooden wall.

"Err, no thank you I just ate, didn't I already tell you? You won't let me use your washrum- uh room, and yet you invite me in to eat? Come on, it can't be that hard to just let me get cleaned up before seeing the owner, can it?"

"But Yoush can'tsh come in ifsh ya don't pay don'cha know,if you weresh intresheed in pearhaps a small ordove?"

"You know now that we're talking about it, I'm not sure that you'll take my money. This does seem to be a place somewhat out of the ordinary. I have a few emergency gold coins on me, do you fellows them?"

"Yeash sir that will ne mosht acsceceptabubble. Do you wisheh to buy a table? And no, the Cheefe witll not be seeing yuou shir. As I belleive that he would Not wont to spheeck to the man that has punctured his beloveoed ship."

"No I do not want a table. And what are you talking about? I was in the water after being nearly eaten by some unholy demon of the depths when I sighted your vessel, I Called for help and while I heard a commotion being started by those two up there, whatever you were doing did not seem to be an attempt to rescue a man overboard. And let me tell you, the adrenalin rush you get from escaping a sea monster is not one that leaves you quickly. Nor does it help your patience for your eventual rescuers."

"We on the Baratiesh shtaff are sorr for your resucinfg deelays. We were expecting pirates yuos shee. Now, Whill that be a party of one? Or do You haveh gushesd arriving?"

"I Don't want a bloody table! And Would you go gargle some garlic? Your breath would probably smell better that way"

"Well then Shur! I am Afraied I will have to ashk you to leave! Shand muh, breth dosh not shcmell bad!"

Though The Professor was not afraid to face the younger man in drunken combat, he was still aware and unnerved by the state his body was in as it quickly drained of the rush that had enabled his escape from the monster and the water as the large Popeye man advanced, swaying, upon him. Noting the others behind him that seemed invigorated to glue the hope of a battle back together. It wasn't the toughest spot he'd been in, but it was up there.

"What the hell do you idiots think you're doing out here!" A gruff, crusty voice bellowed. It immediately stopped everyone in their tracks. Sweat rolled down every chef's neck as they heard the terrifying shout. Professor Thorson leaned over to the right and looked past the frozen fryers, and saw a broad gruffy and grumpy blond haired man in a chef's uniform. He had an extremely long, plated moustache, and had a hard fury in his eyes for what he saw. Yet the thing that demanded Thorson's attention was the improbably long toque that he wore. Such was it's length that he was forced to either believe it was incorporeal, that the doors of the ship had really high tops, or that the man was a former limbo champion. There was no other way that that hat could go through a doorway. The Other old man met eyes with the him and wasted no time in walking towards him, parting the crowed like some Culinary Moses. The man in white met with the man in blood and a very nice suit. Face to face they stared…

And continued to do so.

Another pipe team ran out and back in, quickly placing a second water pipe down and disturbing the silence as the two men continued sizing each other up. Their mind's were cleft in twain as they realized who they had run in front of. Minute facial and muscle movements telling details of each long life. The Crew remained frozen as with each breath came years of untold adventures that hung heavy on the air.

Thorson was the first to speak.

"So, I would assume that you're Chef Zeff." He said with a matter-of-fact tone.

"Yes. And I would assume that you're not from these parts. Perhaps not even from this world"

The sea chef chief responded, looking at The Prof's attire. A cracking sound was heard as the crew's frosted minds thawed enough to almost process that. Surely there was no way that they had heard their boss right. Right?

"I see that you're an observant man. To guess something like that so easily My name is Prof. Thorson, Pleased to meet you." The Prof. Said. Cracking a reedy grin.

'No, that's not true! That's impossible! We're not even on the grand line!' This thought echoed through all the minds of the ships crew at the confirmation of their fears.

"You know, you shouldn't be so easy with the way you give that fact to people. Your whole body can betray your identity if you're not careful." Said Zeff. Briefly allowing a miniscule smile to creep, unnoticed, over his mouth

"Thanks for the advice but I already knew that. If I hadn't known that then I wouldn't have known that I allowed you to know that." The Prof's smile grew a little.

"Maybe so, But I knew that you were going to allow me to know that you knew that I would know that you weren't from here. You however had no way of knowing that I would know what to make of the situation, of that I wouldn't know anyone with the know-how to get you into the known and thus give you unknowing trouble, Prof. Space Oddity." Zeff's smile was visible for longer than a nanosecond this time.

"But, What you didn't know is that I knew that you were the kind of man with the knowledge to know the difference between knowing the right and wrong sort. Therefore, I was able to know that you wouldn't know someone with knowledge for knowing how to gain know-how for nothing. And even if your knowledge of people did extend that far, I knew that you would know what it feels like to have known trust and honour. Thus letting me into the know that I would be safe to let you know what I've known via my body's knowledgeable movements that are unknown to the common men of the known world of my world. Yet I knew from the way that your know-how was shown, that letting you know that I was not from here I knew that I would be safe." Said Thorson. Creating a full-blown grin.

The crew had know idea what to make of the two old men's conversation. And it was beginning to give them headaches just to keep up with it. Zeff actually stopped grimacing and grinned savagely. The crew prepared for the oncoming storm.

"Ah, maybe. But I've always known that knowing know-"

Here he was mercifully cut off by a young man in a black suit ensemble. He had one eyebrow that ended as one long spiral. The other was covered by blond hair that was positioned over his other eye. In his frowning mouth was a cigarette, currently being ground without mercy between his teeth. He looked like he had just been through five miniature wars while trying to salvage a whole army's worth of food. And from a certain point of view, he had.

"Would you two old geezers just get it over with already? The _Baratie_ is being patched up and The third Empire of Table Number Sixty-four though Seventy-two is trying to create a peace treaty with the Clans of The Far North Dining room Table by the Other Window. And I need the captain of the ship to oversee them. And that would be you, you crappy old man. So stop trying to figure out who can fit the most 'Knows' into a sentence and get over here."

Both men stood rooted in place. How could he not see the importance of what they were talking about? They turned to each other again and expressed their disappointments in the new generation.

"Sanji! Can't you hear what the Prof. and I are saying you damn brat?"

"Honestly, I just don't understand today's youth. Can't he understand why we're doing this? Kids these days don't know what they're missing." Said the Professor.

"I Know what you mean. I've tried to get so many to understand us but they all refuse to listen. All they seems capable of thinking about is women and bad music. I blame it on the schools." Zeff said, disgusted.

"You taught me almost everything I know you shitty old man! And we listen to the same music too!" Yelled the young blond one rudely.

"Perhaps we should go take care of the things he mentioned Prof. The brat might pick up on a thing or two." Said Zeff.

"Of course! Though I do apologize for puncturing your ship. I had no other means of escape from the sea. You see?" The Prof. said as his suit continued to paint the deck red.

Zeff frowned and again looked closely at his ship's strange visitor. He then let out a hearty chulckle.

"Bah, don't think about it. We got plenty of meat thanks to you, and we sustain holes like this every other day. Those brats below deck should have had it taken care of an hour ago. They just keep getting slower, and with all that wasted youth in their bodies. Come on then, we can talk more later. You'll have to tell me how you learned to read people like that." Zeff said.

"Lead on Chef. And the same goes for me Zeff, It's not a common skill were I come from I can tell you that." Thorson said.

And so they merrily walked off into the ship laughing and talking like two old freinds the whole way. One somehow phasing his hat through the door and the other leaving a trail of Sea-king blood and saltwater as he walked. Waving his bloody dirk to accentuate his points.

The realization hit them like a bag of fruitcakes.

Sanji's cigarette dropped from his mouth.

What was left of the crew's minds shattered.

Patty passed out again.

Carne was still stuck in the wall.

More screams erupted from the restaurant.

Zeff had been _Smiling_.

Who in The Hell was this Professor?!

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 **Author's notes:**

 _Aw thanks guys. The reviews were great. Yes indeed the Prof. has balls. But you all have yet to see the true magnificence of them!_

 _Thanks to_ Meandercat, ErrantTruant,See-me-clearly, _And_ Kaori _(again) for sticking to the story. This chapter took a while longer then I wanted it to, due to inexperience with writing dialogue. Here's hoping it turns out okay._

 _Thanks again!_


	4. Enter The Straw Hat Boy (Also, rigging)

**Prof. Pirate Chapter 3: Frying and Flying. Enter the Straw hat boy. Catch that right hook and send back an even stronger one Professor!**

Siegfried spent his first night on the _Baratie_ wondering if he was going to wake up and be home again every time he closed his eyes. However, The smell of his garden and the sound of his wife never came. Only the ever present ticking of the clock on the wall. The once unnoticed tick and tock seemed to transcend the time it was supposed to be keeping track of, growing until it seemed to be the only sound he would ever hear again. The Prof. Blinked as he stared into the darkness, and then there was light. A blink sleep, this was going to be a long day

A few minutes after waking and dressing, and his morning push-ups, the Professor decided to try and learn about the new land, well sea, that he now resided in, however, there were no books in the small cabin. Though he had some reservations about staying on the same boat that contained a group that had attempted to viciously spoon him just a day ago, he contented himself with the fact that he had nowhere else to go at the moment. Seeing as how the only thing he could see for a good long while was the vast-stretching waters, waters that held things he was fairly sure were a bit more inclined to try and kill him then his current hosts. And besides that, the ship was looking to be a promising source of information on this strange new world. Though, as he sat down in his temporary room on the top floor of the ship, he found himself wondering on his situation.

" _Well Siegfried this is another fine mess isn't it? You worked long and hard to become what you are and now the universe saw you had your guard down again and decided to keep throwing those damnable right hooks at you. My friends, my students. Everyone back home; Calvin, Siegfried, Beowulf, Hobbes, Ailbhe,_ _Eir, Meta. Dear Katherine…._ "

Thorson let out a deep, quiet sigh as he thought of his wife and children.

" _They'll_ _be able to keep on without me, I made sure of that. I should probably just accept the fact that-"_ Then there was a knock at the door interrupting his ruminations.

"Come in" He said. The youth that had spent most of yesterday swearing, cooking, and making some admiringly charming passes at the lady dinners, Sanji, he believed that was his name, opened the door. Thorson gave him a good look over.

The young man had a busy, no-nonsense look about him, and as The Prof. studied his posture, muscle structure, and overall movement, he caught a glimpse of something deep in his psyche, something was giving off the distinctive aura of the kind that Siegfried noted was not something he should ask about. In front of that however, he was giving off a general feeling of stress, as well as aggravation at the fact that he would rather be doing anything other than helping some doddering old man get his day started. At least, that's what the Prof. guessed. Though it remained to be seen-

"Morning you Old fart," Yep, he was right. "I'm surprised that you're up this early. Chef Zeff says that you can help out with some of the ship's duties until we, that is you, figure out where're you're going. You should get some air, old man. Afterwards, go and see if you can pick up any jobs. I'd recommend just staying out of the kitchen, maybe head up to the second masthead, Fettuccini's in bed and claiming his head has been split open with an axe, that means we need another lookout of the morning, try that if your eyes still work properly. Remember, even though it's one strange looking one, and the fact that is still home to a lot of people, I'd advise you to remember that we're still on a ship, and that means anyone that slacks off gets thrown off." The young man finished with some amount of distaste in his voice. Apparently he hadn't completely taken Zeff's ruling on the Prof.'s unintentional disruptions to heart.

Still, Thorson decided that it would probably be a good idea to not upset his precarious housing situation, and besides, it had been a while since he was at sea, and the waif of cold sea air Sanji had brought with him was bringing up old memories of adventure in days long past. The Prof stood up and stretched out his back, he was a good foot taller then the youth in front of him. He looked at the young and a barely noticeable grin appeared in his pristine grey beard. It had been a good while since he'd had the opportunity to use some good ol' sea jargon.

"Aye sous chef Sanji, I'll be right up and about. 'Gonna want me to check if we need some A & A's an' make sure o'that with the ol' marlinspike 'op the mainmast, jus' incase the Chef wants us to luff and touch her before we let go an' haul. If we end up running aground some reef we'll no doubt be kissing the gunner's daughter if the knighthead is fractured." His speech had taken on the distinct accent of a grizzled old seaman.

With this said, the Prof. pulled a small white pipe from his yet unfathomed coat pockets and walked out the door with such great strides, leaving a confused Sanji in his wake. Sanji stood stock still. He briefly wondered if the old geezer actually knew what he was talking about, or if Zeff had just invited a nutcase onboard, before grumbling and attempting to take a drag form his cigarette, only to find that it had been blown out in the sprightly old man's tailwind. He attempted to light it up again but before he could, The Prof. walked back into the room. Sanji stared at the old man and the old man stared back, after looking at him for a minute and frowning, the Prof. grabbed the cigarette out of Sanji's mouth and doused it in the palm of his hand, he did not seem to take note of the burring tobacco. Before the young cook could even get his first curse out at the Old man for his impertinent action, he found the short pipe shoved back in where his beloved cigarette had rested so comfortably. Though his first instinct was to pull the invasive thing out of his face and give the man that was growing swiftly more annoying by the second an 'explanation' why no one should touch his cigarettes, he was forced to inhale the smoke that the pipe was brewing. As soon as it hit his taste buds, all at once, a multitude of new, yet strangely nostalgic scents flooded Sanji's mind. Faint smells of roasting meat, newly chopped crisp vegetables and fresh herbs came rushing into his mind as, for just a brief moment, he remembered what he smelled all those years ago. Though he was not a man to reminisce on the past, especially his own, he had suddenly been transported to his childhood. For just a moment, he glimpsed the one place that held no ill-memory for him, the kitchen, His kitchen. For just that one involuntary breath he took, he could taste the meals that had first awakened his desire to create, and he saw the clear, happy face of the one he wanted to create for the most. He unconsciously savoured the smoky aftertaste of the one half-mouthful he had taken, and stared in quiet disbelief at the softly smiling old man, the short white pipe almost dropping from his slightly parted lips.

The Old Professor spoke in a quiet, kind tone, answering the question that Sanji's face, if not his mouth, was asking.

"I just thought you could use something to relax yourself son. That blend right there is something I worked on for years, it's an item that's very close to my home, just think of this as a sort of favour, to yourself and me. Oh, and perhaps you might think about switching to a pipe? Actually, you can keep that one, I've got a few more tucked away here somewhere. Ah! and as a bonus, it'll make you look like perfect father material. Trust me, I know I've got seven kids after all!" He winked before striding out down the hall again.

As he stood alone in the room, Sanji slowly reached up and took the still smoking pipe from his mouth and stared at the small white object. What did the old bastard put in this thing? He thought, before shrugging and taking another pull from it and walking out of the room, he had food to prepare after all.

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Following Sanji's request and eager to have something to take his mind off his troubled thoughts. Professor Thorson found himself Stepping outside the ship into the cold morning sea air, how he'd missed it! It was a grey, cloudy day, at least for the moment, and the sea was rhythmically crashing heavy against the ship's underbelly. It took Thorson a few minutes to find his sea legs again after placing them in his mental attic. After regaining his balance, He judged it to be about five-thirty in the morning, what a grand time for a bit of climbing. Making his way up the _Baratie's_ surprisingly bouncy rigging, He greeted the man that for the next few hours would be his only companion.

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A few hours later, and Linguini had yet to shut up.

Linguini hadn't expected it from the ship's largely unwanted guest, but he was enjoying his verbal spar with the old Professor. It had been a long time since he or Fettuccini had found someone, besides Chef Zeff and Sanji, outside their home island that could keep an argument up for so long. He began to think that, just maybe, this old Prof. wasn't so bad, even if he did poke a few holes in the starboard bow. He was just finishing a particularly brilliant insult of the old man's lapels when a giant wave hit the ship. He was quick to grab onto the sturdy wood of the railing and steady himself.

" -And'a that's a why your'a lapels would make'a a terrible dipping sauce! Whoa, Careful Prof! You'd a best not take'a fall offa this F*Î(kng thing. Now, where a was I? … Professor?"

Curious, He heard a panicked shout and looked to the Professor's masthead; just in time to see him fall off the railing. Reacting quickly, Linguini called out for help as fast as he could, which, considering how fast he could sling an insult, was pretty darn fast.

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The Professor was a civilised man, he knew how to take punishment and how to return it in equal, if not greater measure. And yet after. Three. _Looong._ **Hours** of non-stop verbal combat, he was beginning to feel his age and lose ground as the long-limbed loquacious lackadaisical lad lashed everything from his life to his lapels like lightning without limit or lust for liquid. And the many unimaginable expletives peppered in. It had to stop. It had too! He was too old for this!

As the Professor fervently hoped for some opening to salvage what remained of his long defended verbal territory, a wave, large and laden with the unintentional and oversized answer to his prayers, crashed against the ship, upsetting his rusty sea-legs just enough to have him tumble over the edge of the crow's nest. Thinking quickly with what little movement that still remained to be affected by him before the fall took over, he reached out to grab a hold on the side of the wood. Unfortunately, his arms seemed to have been drained by the climb and the previous day's "swim". His hand slipped and he began to fall head first towards the very hard looking deck. Time slowed to a crawl as he began to think. He supposed that he had lived a good life. Everything was taken care of for his family. He was old and tired. He could, should, just give up now…

Suddenly, Muscles firing hard, bearded soul roaring, moving faster then he had done just the day before, Siegfried was shocked to find himself kicking out at the fast fading wood of the Crow's nest with all the force his old body could muster, his feet just managing to hit the timber with enough force to launch himself away from the fatal direction he had been going in. Instead of crashing to his death, Siegfried pushed himself into the extremely elastic rigging of the second mast, stretching it as if it was a rubber band, before he was shot out with all the force of a cannonball towards the water. He thought he could hear a thick accent crying: " Man overboard!" He hit the water, and everything went black….

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Professor Siegfried woke up in a warm but hard bed, looking around and trying to move, he discovered that his head, torso, and one of his legs were wrapped in bandages. He groaned, so much for his record. This alerted the crew member that was presumably serving as a doctor over to his bed. The Prof. tried to sit up, but quickly regretted the decision as his muscles went through about the thirty-eighth worst pain he'd experienced in them. Evidently, the past two days of exertion had caught up to him and it was not going to be pleasant. A small contributing factor The Prof. noticed as the pain died down was the doctor-chef that seemed to be currently assigned to him, was starting to panic and give what would have been a rather convincing impression of an flapping mother duck in his wild attempts to pacify his charge. He seemed to the Professor like he had little to no experience in his second profession.

"S-Sir, y-you have t-to l-lie s-still! Y-You were a-almost d-drowned, you've g-got to t-take it easy!" He stammered over nearly every word, Siegfried rolled his eyes, clearly the well intentioned young man could use a bit of confidence, or at least a good old metaphorical kick in the pants.

"Hey! calm down son," said the Prof. in his deep, even voice. "I was only sling-shot into the ocean at speeds that would have broken a normal man in half, its not a big deal. I'm not going to just fall apart."

He descended into fierce grumbling, and as the stuttering doc began to try and force him to go back to sleep, The Prof. started lecture on how to calm nerves and the importance of effective bedside manner as the crew member stationed to him started to perspire. The old man was weirding him out something fierce.

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A couple of days later and Professor Thorson was through sitting in bed and dealing with peeling vegetables and trying to teach his doctor the finer points of actually living like a normal man, cracked bones or no, he had a cunning plan.

Waking up before the crack of dawn, he hopped out of the medical bed and fled the accursed hospital room, he swore that some little bastard had painted the room in those sick off-green hospital colours and it, along with the constant stammering and quivering was starting to get to him. Along the constant visits from the cousins, he knew now why they were stuck on lookout duty. He managed to sneak into the pantry unnoticed and created a lovely sandwich: A foot long. Wide, and tall. It was beautiful.

Evading his way through the now awake staff, he made his way back to his room and began his morning push-ups. Thankful though he was that his arms had gone relatively undamaged, he was surprised to see that not only had he not lost his count over his period of inactivity, he was actually surpassing it. Strange? Yes. He noted that he would have to explore this later, adding it to his ever increasing list of things to discover about the new land. Once he found some bloody land anyway.

Eventually people started coming into the restaurant again, The Prof. Had stashed himself in the rafters with a good supply of food, enough that he wouldn't go hungry, and not enough that anyone would notice, he had picked up the skill early in his youth. Ah, what a rascal he'd been. Switching his thoughts to more pressing matters, he had learned that a lot of customers came mainly for the fights that sprung up between the crew and the apparently fairly common pirate problem. Well, at least he'd learned something about this world, he mused as he flipped through some old newspapers he had gathered out of the trash. It was submerged in overconfident psychopaths, ineffectual and unsympethetic government navel forces, and very strange weather. " _Shame about the customers though, the_ Baratie _chefs evidently knew how to make a good bit of meat."_ He thought as he chewed upon one of the mentioned bits of food. Finished with his breakfast, he decided to go look for Zeff and see what answers he could find with the man that he had struck up a mutual respect with.

A few minutes later, and Zeff heard a knock at his door.

"Who is it? If it's Linguini, no, you only get one day off a month for hangovers, and you know that so stop asking!" He shouted. Evidently, he had received quite a few visits as well.

"No Zeff, nothing to fear, it's Thorson, may I come in?" He asked

"Oh? I thought you'd be in med for a few more days Prof. Yeah come on in." He responded in his gruff voice

Thorson walked into the room. Zeff was sitting by his desk, it looked like he had just finished something, probably bills, He thought. Taking a seat on one of the room's empty chairs, he Began to question Zeff on the matter of, well, the world. Eventually, they came to the topic of the myths of the Grand Line, the pirates, and the strange objects known only as Devil Fruits. and it was here that The Prof's interests were peaked.

"So, if I understand you correctly, there are such strange things happening in this place, this, 'Grand Line'? That I might actually find out a way to get back home?" He asked.

"Maybe, maybe. But I thought you weren't interested in going back? What made you change your mind?" The mustachioed man asked in return, stroking the long plaits of said mustache.

Professor Thorson considered his question. Why did he suddenly want to go back? He thought he'd made peace with his situation. "Well I don't really know, I guess I-" He was cut off by the sound of cannon fire, some young voice shouting something about gum very loudly, a canonball almost punching a hole through his chest, had he not barely managed to dodge it, however, it then exploded, throwing whatever expectations Thorson had for logic to be blown up in much the same way he and the Head chef almost were.

Following his and Zeff's collapse from the shock wave and shrapnel, a large group of crew members massed into the room and spent a good minute making sure everything was fine before Zeff had to threw them out and remind them that they still had customers to serve. This was yet again followed by two more chefs dragging in a young boy with a straw hat, saying that it was his fault for the cannonball. And lo, the boy said the words that introduced Professor Thorson to the one man that would one day be renown across the world!

"Sir! I'm very sorry!" He was on his knees when he looked and saw Zeff's peg leg. " AAGAGUGGUHGHG! Your leg!" The young man screamed

"Idiot!" Bellowed the irate cook, and stomped on the boy's face.

This was going to be one _Looooooooong_ day.

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 **Author's notes:**

 _ **Hey guys, sorry this one took so long, I've been kinda busy as of late and, midway through this one, I realized that I was making Sanji start to like the Old Prof. With little reason, and that is something that I find hard to take in any story. But I still fear that the character interactions in this chapter may have been not as good as I wanted. But hey, that's what you guys re here for right? I mean, I did start writing these so I could become a better writer. So please if you have any criticisms for what I'm doing, like the slightly more contemplative way I tried to write this chapter, just tell me. Other then that though, Man! Has it been amazing that so far, all of my reviews have been positive! It's a great feeling to know that you made something that made a lot of people laugh, In a good way I hope.**_

 _ **Also, I made some edits to the previous chapters. Grammar, more jokes, spelling, that kind of stuff.**_

 _ **Thanks to**_ **Black dove white dove, Isafish, Jack Leslie (** _ **Yes, I am a man), and all of you repeated reviewers, thanks ever so much.**_

 _ **\- B. R. III**_

 _ **P.S: Thanks Kaori, I wasn't sure how people would react to that scene, so I made a couple of small changes based on your comments.**_


	5. Prof Pirate 3 12: IntermissionUpdate

Professor Pirate 3 and a 1/2: Intermission and Update.

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Thorson woke up slowly, momentarily blinded by the light morning sun creeping over the wall of his garden. " _Well that dream was a first_ " He thought. Before realizing that he was covered in wood chips and was lying on something that felt very similar. " _Oh don't tell me, Henderson came asking about his gnomes again._ " He theorized, well it was that

As he attempted to push himself up, he noticed that his arms, legs, torso, and in fact most of his body was somewhat damaged. He noticed by way of the **"HOLY HELL"** Levels of pain signals that was attempting to make it's way into his nervous systems, the signals that were trying to tell him that he should just lie down and not attempt to kill himself via self inflicted muscle shredding. He ignored them, it was Saturday, and there would be hell to pay regardless of the consequences if he missed Katherine's morning pancakes after missing the opportunity to ask her how her Friday went.

Stumbling around in three quarters blindness, he forced his muscles to burn past their limits for, though he hadn't done it in years, the second time that week, eventually coming to what he believed to be the door to his house, he flung it open and bellowed in his deep voice. "Katherine! I'm sorry I fell asleep in the garden last night! It must have been that extra couple of hours I spent trying to convince that girl she wasn't a wolf!" There was no answer. As he stood in the open doorway, his eyes finally adjusted to the light, and what he saw suddenly made all the burning in his mind and body go quiet, as he looked upon a scene that was terrifyingly familiar. An old blond-haired chef with a toque of quite improbable size, and a young man with a scar under his eye and a yellow straw hat, sitting in a recently refurbished room. Looking to his immediate right, he saw the hole that the cannonball that had done the refurbishing had left. Looking back with something of a trace of horror at the two men giving him the universal 'Huh?' look via the classic head tilt

Sighing resignedly, the Old Prof. Walked into the room, took a chair, and began taking wood fragments out of his heavily wrapped bandages as the two other occupants of the cabin decided to resume what ever issue of discourse they had been engaged with prior to his enigmatic entrance. The boy was sent crashing into the wall a few short moments later.

" _Well Katherine,"_ He groaned internally. " _Looks like those pancakes will have to wait a while. Because where- or whenever this place is,"_ He looked up at the sixteenth most animated argument he'd ever seen.

" _ **I'm back."**_

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 _ **A.N.**_

" **And so am I! At least for this bit. Just a heads up, this is a small piece that I was suddenly struck to pen, well type, while I was working on the actual Forth Chapter of**

 **Prof. Pirate** **. I really wanted to update you guys as to what's going on with my stuff, but I also didn't want to get anyone excited at a new chapter notification only to click on it and receive the disappointing "** _ **Stuffs hard, come back later**_ **" Type messages. Plus, this little bit helps fill in the last chapter a tad too, handy right?**

 **So yeah, I'm still working on the newest chapter, there was just such a long period of inactivity due to the usual things: I.E: School, Stress, Fighting a battle to Improve myself, all that jazz and funk. Put it together and what do you have? Junk.**

 **More pleasant things include: More stories in the works, better grasp of what I want this story to be, Running a D &D Game with my friends, Family being good, and life just moving on.**

 **My sincere thanks to everyone that reviewed, favourited, and fallowed in my absence. And an especially big thanks to** **Kyrianae Narii**

 _ **whose name is quite gnarly,**_

 _ **And whose review has a high level of critique**_

 _ **Though please do not worry**_

' _ **Bout the way you words moved me**_

 _ **Fair critics will not make me weep**_

 _ **For fact, your review had me glistening**_

 _ **Just to hear how people are listening**_

 _ **Sure, my little tale must've done good**_

 _ **For when all review**_

 _ **With such a clear view**_

 _ **I'm reminded why I came to this fanficition neighbourhood!"**_

 _ **P.S. "Please forgive my prose."**_

 _ **\- B. R. III.**_


	6. Luffy

Prof. Pirate: Chapter Four.

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There sat Prof. Siegfried E. R. Thorson, digging pieces of an exploded cannonball out of his suit and the thick layers of bandages layered around him, ironically, it seemed that the ocean almost breaking his body had ended up saving his life. He reflected on this for a moment before being yanked out of his thoughts by the loud argument of Zeff and the boy the staff had dragged in.

"Two years brat! That's the smallest amount of time you'll have to work to pay this off!" Zeff Bellowed, a terrifying sight to any grown man, bandaged and bloodied as he was. The young man, who was surprisingly unfazed by the cook's harsh demands and appearance, considered this for all of a millisecond.

"What! No way I can wait that long in here! Two days old chef guy, that's how long I'll work." His response held no negotiation, same as Zeff.

The Prof. couldn't tell if Zeff was more impressed with the boy's audacity or if he just didn't want to believe that he had said something so tremendously underwhelming.

"You disrespectful brat! I might have died because of your carelessness! Doesn't that make you feel like a heartless bastard, Refusing the wish of a frail old man that you almost killed?!" He shouted, kicking the impertinent young boy into one of the rooms walls. Only for him to rise out of the mass of wooden wall fragments, and if there was any consequence for the lad, it seemed that being used as a wood chipper had only made him slightly more upset than before, and continued his enthusiastic argument.

Thorson stared in silence, usually in a situation like this he would have said something, given out some of that patented old-man wisdom, and yet he was quiet. It was, bizarre, mesmerising, the strange boy seemed to have a rubber like quality every time he moved or was forcibly moved. It was almost comical how he seemed to bend around The old chef's leg like a rubber band being stretched between someone's fingers, and how he went ricocheting off the walls and creating ever higher piles of rubble. Yet the boy would always bounce up like some demented ball and stick stubbornly to his proposed two days, and would once again be sent flying off into a desk or some like object that would to object to his continued horizontal defiance of gravity. Eventually, the strangeness of the situation wore off of Thorson and he realized something was missing. If the boy had been the one to fire the cannon ball, why would he be here negotiating with the man like it wasn't his fault? And why had he fired the canon anyway? If he was one of the pirates that his medical attendant had told him, in-between stammers, that the restaurant faced on a weekly basis, why had he bothered to apologise? And why was he so rubbery-

"Hold on Zeff! Stop kicking the boy about for a minute, I'd like to ask him a few things." He couldn't exactly tell why, but he felt compelled to interact with the young man.

"What are talking about Thorson? This brat almost killed us and you want to talk to him? I'm not stopping till this boy decides to repay his debt to this establishment." He said, lashing out again just as the boy had raised a finger and had turned his attention to the Prof. and once more sending him crashing in that oddly comical way.

"Yes I understand that, but you can't tell me that you haven't noticed the way he moves when you kick him, I don't know why, but I feel compelled to find out. Maybe he's found one of those devil fruits you were telling me about. And besides that, look at yourself, if I hadn't had these damnable bandages due to your overly safety conscious medic I might have died. You on the other hand, without any protection, managed to survive an almost direct hit from an exploding canon ball with just a small cut on your forehead and a small period of unconsciousness." He said, inviting Zeff to actually reflect on the boy's strange constancy.

Despite the obvious unfeeling nature of the wood that made up his peg leg, thinking back, Zeff did indeed realise that the boy had bent over a bit more than the normal human body would. Momentarily passing on his desire to keep punting the boy around, he gave a quick nod to the old man. The Prof. gave a quick resentful thought to whatever power had forced him into this position, before walking stiffly over to the straw hatted boy. Pausing in mild shock as he watched him stretch out his own limbs to inhuman levels as he pulled his head out of yet another pile of assorted wooden rubble, grumbling as he did so.

"Argh, geez old man I can't stay that long, I've got things to do and you kicking me isn't going to make me change my mind!" With a loud snap he was free and turned around expecting to see the old chef attempting to 'convince him' to stay again. Only to find that the other old man had finally moved off his perch and was now staring down at him in what looked to the boy to be either confusion, interest, or confused interest. The young man tilted his head at the Prof. And squinted, and unsquinted, muttering something about hair and unintentionally assuming an exaggerated version of the Older man's face.

"…" Said Thorson, studying the lad. He had an odd sort of feel to him, it had been years, well, days, except that was with someone that knew how to know so it didn't count, since the Professor had attempted to try and read into someone with this kind of being to their selves. The boy warranted study, he could tell that much.

"…" Said the boy, staring back with a set of the most inexpressive eyes that Siegfried had ever seen in total silence, apart from the muttering, and yet he could almost hear the boy with how earnest his entire being was. It was on the whole, very confusing.

"… I'm finding myself at something of a loss here. Could you tell me-" The young man's eyes suddenly shot open in some kind of profound realisation as he gasped before loudly interrupted the Prof:

"Are you Shanks' dad!?" He excitedly bellowed, pointing a oddly stretched and inquisitive looking index finger at the Prof.'s face.

"... Pardon me?" The Prof. said. His confused response either went unheard by the living rubber, or the boy just took it as further confirmation of his elaborate theory, as he continued to bounce ever faster, to the point that he looked to be positively vibrating with excitement.

"Yeah of course you are!" Well He seemed to have confirmed it now. "I Haven't met anyone else that's old with red hair, so you've got to be Shanks' dad! Plus, you're tall too." The Prof. wasn't entirely sure why he had been expecting anything else.

After being thrown for a loop for the first time in what felt like, well, the term 'in years' was getting increasingly hard to use with how much had happened in such a few days. The Prof. chuckled at the boy's friendly nature and responded in his deep bass fashion of speaking

"No my young Straw-hat, I don't know of any relation between myself and this Shanks. Mind you now, I'd wouldn't take terribly to investigating any possible connection if you'd care to help me with something regarding yourself. Your name, and, I don't know, what you're doing out here on these strange waves would be a good start."

The boy seemed to take to the suggestion Swimmingly. He stood tall, struck an open pose, thumb at his chest, and smiled one of the widest grins the Professor had ever seen, and he had seen a Glasgow one. The boy pulled in a large breath and said the words that , though Professor Siegfried E. R. Thorson would hear many times over, he would never forget, even after his final climb on the golden spiral out of this world.

" **My name is Monkey D. Luffy! And I'm gonna' be King of The Pirates!"**

Siegfried had heard many men declare their dreams and ambitions to him, some were just flights of fantasy, others were strong convictions stated by men that would go on to try and change the world. Some of them had succeeded, others had failed long before they ever started. But:

When he heard this boy shout out to the whole world through just one old man he'd met only a few seconds ago. He could feel something greater then a mountain being split in two.

When he heard this young man with the straw hat declare his dream, he felt a pulse that, though it sped away faster then he could notice it, still left him with energy and such strong emotions that he had not felt pumping through his body like a man renewed. Even if only for an instant

When Luffy Said that he was going to be The King of The Pirates. Whatever that meant in this insane new world, and whether it would shatter the land into peaces or create something even greater. Professor Siegfried E. R. Thorson Knew, He **Knew** that it was going to happen.

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 **Author's notes:**

 **"Hey everyone! Short chapter I know, But I felt that this interaction between The Prof. and our old friend Luffy needed it's own space to ensure the full impact of what I'm trying to convey. I thought that might be lost a bit if it just went on after that revelation.**

 **Thanks for writing that review** _ **FaolenBookWolf.**_ **Sorry, but the Prof is sort of exlusive to One Piece for now, mostly due to it being my only posted story thus far. Here's to the future though!**

 **Anyhoo. Sorry about the delays. I know I said this would be along soon, but I kinda hit a writer's block with the dialogue in this chapter, but hey! That's why I'm here right? To improve my writing and give people some enjoyment along the way! Here's hoping it turned out alright."**

B. R. III.


	7. Something In The AIR?

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While a young man proclaimed his dream just a few decks above, in the galley, there was a blond man in a black suit who was, for the first time in years, absentmindedly prepping a meal. Sanji stirred and carefully added the finishing touches to the soup. A beautiful consommé, it had been a dish requested three days in advance, among a large number of other extremely- annoyingly, specific requests. Apparently the man who had ordered it was, for this part of the east blue, some kind of navy big shot. Though Sanji and most of the staff had little doubts about the man being nothing short of a full bastard, his constant messages had not endeared him to the crew, they none the less were chefs, and that means that you serve the food asked in the best way you could. It was a cook's honour to ensure the both the enjoyment of food on a voyage, and the survival of those souls that dared traverse the ocean's mighty waters. Sanji understood that, and was giving the food the proper respect it deserved. He had to. The importance of the most minute details of every single meal that he had ever, and would ever prepare was ingrained into his very soul.

Yet at the moment Sanji was not in the kitchen. As he smoked the small thin white pipe that Old Geezer #2 had shoved into his mouth, he found that the mix of spices had been a unique experience that he had almost nothing to compare it too. His mind drifted involuntarily away to memories that he had thought he had buried over a decade ago. Even as his body still cooked as masterfully as it always had, ever since he had taken the first taste of the smoke, he had been almost distracted by trying to decipher the various spices in the blend. So far he had been able to identify at least three, one of which was nutmeg, but his advanced pallet could still detect many more to be found as he played with the flavours rolling around in his mouth. It was… strangely helpful to him. As soon as he needed to check the smell or taste of any dish, the flavourful smoke of the blend would dissipate, leaving only the taste that he was looking for. Yet it was so much easier to find the right smell or taste whenever he needed to, every smell was shaper, every flavour was fresher. The whole world just seemed like it had been washed and freshly seasoned as it appeared brighter and more beautiful in his eyes then ever before.

"… _I'm going to have to have a talk with that guy"_ He thought to himself as he shook his head and continued to add the finishing touches to the project that had taken the efforts and involved the almost constant care of, at one point or another, every cook on the ship, while trying to ignore the extreme energy that was being pumped into him with every breath. It was a lovely, almost clear, broth, and as Sanji felt through whatever enhanced senses that the strange blend had given him, it was obviously a work of art even accounting for his already extremely high standards, but freshness of his out look was so invigorated that he was sure he was almost bursting with energy at the mere smell of the thing. " _This marine guy might be an asshole, but there's no way in hell that he'll stay like that after tasting this. Three solid days of hard work. This soup is a masterpiece of the culinary arts. A testament to chef's efforts the world over! This is really fu#%ing good soup!"_ Sanji whirled around and looked to congratulate his faithful compatriots on their hard work over the course of those three days, only to find that they were all staring at him and perspiring at a rate which risked the extinguishing of their stoves.

Bewildered, but still feeling oddly pleasant, Sanji waltzed over to one of the chefs that, though staring and sweating like the others, was still busily finishing the last additions to a large ham leg, bone and all. Sanji smiled a large grin and wrapped his arm over the shoulder of the cook, Linguini it seemed.

"Hey there you old noodle! What's going on with every one? All I was doing was coming to congratulate you fine men on your collective efforts on the consommé! I mean, have you tasted it?! It's like we managed to fit in a million more flavours in there then ever before! That soup is a feat worthy of a thousand days and you guys did it in three! … Seriously, what's the matt..er..?" Sanji slowly trailed off as he followed the horrified look of the thin cook.

The first thing he noticed was the mysterious disappearance of the ham, it was just entirely gone from it's former resting place, as well as all of the sauces and vegetables that it had been plated with. The second thing he noticed was the odd object that was sticking outside of his slowly unsmiling mouth. It was nether the usual cigarette that he kept in, nor the similarly shaped pipe that had forcefully made itself at home in the cigs usual resting spot like an unusually charismatic salesman. It was not even a particularly large lipstick mark from a successful evening, unknowingly left on. No, instead of any of these much more preferable things, what Sanji felt and saw as he gingerly withdrew the formerly stealthy object from his slowly loosening jaw, was an extremely cleaned ham bone. The bone itself, at least the half formerly located in his mouth, had completely disappeared. And as he turned it around in his hands, taking his other arm off of the nervous wreck officially known as a cook/watchman, he looked through the middle of the half that remained. If the bone had any more obvious tooth marks, he would have guessed an especially stealthy beaver had quickly bitten through it and planted it in some unsuspecting handsome devil and made it's getaway. Even the bone marrow had been spirited away with little to no trace.

Sanji and the rest of the cooks just stared at the bone, what else was there to do? If anyone knew, they were too scared to mention it to the other frozen chefs.

This staring-eye-stand off continued until one chef remembered that the wrath that would rain down upon them if something was burned beyond all recovery was far more certain and guarantied to be much more painful then something like the sous-chef eating something more quickly, more savagely, and more cheerfully then ever seen before. Literally, since no one had actually _seen_ Sanji eat the bone. Then again, no one was going to ask if he had, at least, not until he was out of ear range. For his part, Sanji just quietly laid the half-bone back down on it's plate and walked briskly back to his station, he had soup to mind after all, and that responsibility outweighed any mysterious new… _Habits,_ that he had suddenly picked up.

After nought but a paltry three seconds of silent stirring, though it felt like three corners of eternity to every soul in the kitchen that day, the order for the meal that Sanji was creating came in.

"Hey guys! It's that stuck up marine with da super specific orders, 'Es demanding 'e's consommé and wine. Do we 'ave any of da Eterudes Berginstine left? But seriously, you guys should see dis peacock, pink 'air and all. I'd wager a month's pay that woman 'e's got… Wot 'ere you all staring at, eh?" The man bringing in the order finished confusedly, seeing the unearthly quiet of the usually bustling kitchen.

Sanji got out the proper bowls and dished out even portions with an artistic grace and walked over to the temporary wine holder, giving it a quick scan, he deduced that none of the wine requested would be available to serve as requested. He quickly grabbed the wine that actually went with the light, flavourful soup, and began to walk stiffly out of the kitchen. He would have preferred to delegate the temporary waiter position to anyone else at the moment, but apparently, there was a woman out there, and he was looking for any excuse to not think about what had just happened even less then he already was.

So as it happened, Sanji walked out carrying both the soup and the wine to the table of the marine officer that had already made his shitty personality known in advance, and desperately trying to make his mind as blank as he possibly could. As it would turn out, this would prove to be a rather horrible idea.

For as soon as the blond formerly chain-smoking sous-chef opened the door to the main dining area, he was assaulted by a hundred thousand different smells far more unfamiliar then the comforting and well known scents of a busy kitchen. He could smell at once what he was sure was everything and everyone in the entire room, and even a little beyond that. The shock was so great that he almost faltered in his perfect carrying posture. Almost. Years of training posture and muscle control proved invaluable in that instant, as he seized his whole body in an upright position and began to try and sort through the veritable smog of potentially damning smells.

At first, it was like trying to cut through that same metaphoric smog with a simple butter knife. And as you did so, the smog lit on fire and tore it's way into your chest.

His mind swam as his eyes began to tear up, he could barely breathe, he could definitely not see, each millisecond that he forced himself to breathe was like hovering his face two centimetres from a tub full of cheese created ammonia over a century old. He was sure he could feel his skin beginning to peal and flake at the sheer intensity of it.

However, gradually, the raging inferno of scents began to even themselves out according to his wishes, Sanji would later swear that he could feel just for an instant that his entire body was wreathed in a flame of his own, directing those troublesome scents to the proper places and levels. Eventually, Sanji let his muscles relax, and started to look for the right table. Now he knew the _Baratie_ like his own knives, however, the experience, short as it was,, he figured it to be about,, oh,,, three corners of eternity long,,, was still highly disorienting to say the least. But as he began to rub at his eyes with his free hand to wipe the tears away, Sanji found that he could actually _Smell_ where the potential shitty customer was, along with his, date? Yes, it was most assuredly a beauty that sat with the odd smelling man, and before long, Sanji opened his eyes to see that he was already three steps from the right table. His nose had been right, there was an odd looking pink-haired man paradoxically sitting with a ravishing blond, she seemed to be wearing some kind of interesting perfume, some out of sea brand probably. As he made his final approach to the table, the peacock yelled out something.

"You see my darling? I will not permit laziness when it comes to me getting what I asked for. You there! Waiter! You're a full minute late, do you think that your customers will stand for this kind of lateness?" He finished with a smug grin.

' _Oh yeah_ ' Sanji thought to himself. ' _'He's acting exactly like he smells- er, looks. Damn it, That Prof. is Going to have hell to pay if he did this on purpose'_ He responded to the smug bastar- I mean customer.

"Sorry _sir_ , but we're a little short staffed, you see all our waiters ran away as of yesterday. And one more thing, I'm not a waiter, I'm the sous-chef. Now enjoy your meal, _sir_. Ah, what do we have here though? Some exquisite beauty that I haven't seen in these waters for quite some time. That's a wondrous perfume you're wearing, perhaps you could tell me later on this evening, if you'd care to join me." The woman giggled as He finished, shifting his attention completely to the handsome woman before him, it wasn't so much that the perfume was special, as he found once he leaned closer he could tell it was actually one of those imitator brands that prayed on those who couldn't tell the difference, honestly it said more about the peacock then the lady that the big shot navy officer would buy something like that for his date.

"Hey cut out of here! You've served your dish so be gone, staff." The pink-head was clearly angry, though trying hard to maintain what little authority he possessed. Though Sanji wouldn't have usually stood up for being treated like that by anyone, he wasn't in a hurry to accidentally destroy more of his home, especially after that Prof. had made his big entrance and wound up causing more damage then most pirate crews in the area, that and he had more pressing matters to see to then this. He didn't want anything else to just go 'missing' as he had started to refer to it, and being able to navigate a dining room just by scent might have it's own uses.

However, as he began to walk back towards the stairwell, he heard the peacock call out 'Waiter!' once again, once more wanting to avoid any unnecessary trouble, Sanji chose to respond to the 'man's call and came over.

"Tell me waiter, wine, it has such a unique fragrance. Yes, yes. From the soil of Mico of the north land, bitter with plenty of body, and just a tad sour. This wine… must be… The famous, Eterudes Berginstine! Tell me waiter, am I rrright?!" Again that smug grin. So that was his game, try and select a fancy sounding wine and mention a few facts you read off the bottle once after making sure that it would be served. Sanji smiled, perhaps this could teach the peacock to not bat the other creatures with it's oversized feathers.

Sanji clasped a spoon against the outstretched palm of the officer's hand, and reaplied with simple truth.

"Nope, not even close. Now I suggest you eat your Consommé before it gets cold, _Sir_." He said, with a grin of his own.

As he started to once again make his way back to his room, the dinners around him started to laugh at the officer's oblivious attempt to impress, and Sanji tried to actively navigate through the dining room with his eyes closed, a feat he could achieve quite easily, but he still needed to see if the enhanced smell he had unlocked was a fluke or not. He wasn't worried about the marine, ' _íf he even takes a proper whiff of that soup he'll be repeat patron for sure'_ , was what was going through Sanji's head. The soup was a masterpiece, a painting that you could eat, it was music you could taste, colour you could smell, the warm and delicious scent of the broth lingered even as he walked away. In fact, he could tell where on the table each dish was, and how both were still untouched. He could even smell a small bug on skittering on the floor underneath the table, it wasn't a harmful insect, so Sanji just let it go. He was in a good mood after over coming that painful nostril experience and taking the arrogant man down a peg.

Wait, he could smell blood, the insect was almost dead, it had been stomped by the peacock. Oh well, it was just a bug, not much harm in that.

Wait, why was the marine's scent taking the bug's scent up to the table…

" _ **No…"**_

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* * *

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Lieutenant Fullbody was not having his evening going as planed. He had planed to swoop in on this quaint establishment and wow everyone there with his 'incredible' knowledge. Now thanks to some stupid twist of fate, he had been stuck with an all too knowledgeable sous-chef that had reduced him to a laughing stock, even his date, " _The bitch"_ he thought, was gently laughing along with the other dinners.

" _Well"_ He thought, as he crunched the harmless bug half to death under his shoe. " _If they're going to try and ruin my status, then I'll ruin their entire lives. If I just drop this in and make like it's their fault, well, after severing a marine officer a bowl of bug soup, no one will ever come here again!"_ He was about to drop the weakly struggling bug into his meal when a massive pressure clamped around his hand and forced itself over his entire body. He froze, he couldn't move, why was he scared, and why was his hand heating up?

He looked up an found himself staring into the face of the devil himself.

And the devil spoke, his voice blazing with heat and anger, yet it chilled Fullbody's very soul:

" **What the hell do you think you're doing to that beautiful Consommé?!"**

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 **Author's Notes:**

" **Wow, for my standards, that was pretty fecking fast. Yey. But anyhow, yeah, I'm bringing up Sanji and his new pipe. I know some of you might be wondering why I'm going for the whole, 'super scent' thing, but rest assured, I know were this is going. Gonna be a while before we see the full extent of it though. Like, not until Enie's Lobby or Skypeia at the earliest.**

 **Thanks for the Reviews, Favourites and Follows guys, every time I see one of those numbers go up, I get reminded that there are people who are excited to read what I've written for you. Plus, re-reading your reviews was very helpful in inspiring me to work harder on this chapter. So thanks!**

 _ **B2516**_ **: Thank you! I'm so glad that so many people are understanding why I made the Prof. As for the possibility of devil fruits, well… Let's just say I've come up with a few. I have one idea in mind that I'm especially found of. Not saying I'm giving anyone a fruit though, just saying I have some ideas for some.**

 _ **SoulAuron:**_ **Thank you for agreeing with me. I hope when you read this chapter you'll see why I wanted to keep them separate.**

 _ **BlackDove WhiteDove:**_ **All that glitters isn't gold, but your reviews sure are!**

 **Oh, and just to make one small spoiler for one character's possible change, at some point in the possible future:**

" _ **WAATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATAT! WATAAAA!"**_

 **-?**

 **Until next time"**

 **B. R. III.**


	8. Honouring Food

Prof. Pirate Chapter 6: Honouring Food

While a few decks below, a man was about to be able to empathize with meat that was simultaneously being put through, in no particular order, a tenderizer, a grinder, and a flash fryer. In the recently open-air head chef's room, two men were looking at a young man in various levels of shock and confusion. To the Prof, the boy's oath on what he would achieve was only slightly clued in to the possible significance of that statement. While Zeff sat in a sort of slightly stunned silence as he watched them talk a bit before letting out a low chuckle.

"You think you can become King Of The Pirates brat? You can't even get out of a debt with an old man, much less take on the grand line." He grumbled divisively. The straw hatted boy looked at him with a great smile on his face that Zeff had to try hard not to match. If he hadn't gone and destroyed his room, injured him and the Prof, and desperately tried to so flagrantly cut down on the time he had demanded, he might have found himself liking the troublesome brat.

"Well I don't care what you say, I'm still going to find the One Piece. But I can't do that if I'm stuck here for a year. I'll tell you what, I'll stay _three_ days, _and_ I'll throw in two copper pieces too! Good deal huh?"

No, nope, he was going to kill him, resurrect him, and have him work for _two_ years.

However, before he could act out his devious plan, the Prof. Turned around to face him. He had an idea glimmering in his green eyes.

"Hold on Zeff, I have a cunning plan for this impasse." He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder, who was taking the momentary pause to jam a finger up his nose. "If Luffy here needs to fulfill his debts to the ship for the repairs, but he refuses to even consider anything longer then a week for work,"

"At the most, and that's my final, Final offer. What he says." The boy cut in, Eliciting further and louder grumblings from Zeff by flicking the booger he had found away into one of the only remaining clean parts of the room.

"I'd advise against pushing him further Luffy. Anyways. What if he provided the repairs himself? Free of charge of course." He said confidently, pausing for the predicted interruption. "Yeah, I can just rebuild your dumb ship- wait what?! I don't even know how to carpent!" Luffy shouted wildly after realizing what he had just agreed to.

Zeff laughed, his potentially evil plans vanished for the moment "I don't really think he's up to the task Prof. Though I'm sure that he would find a year or two of being a chore boy much easier." Luffy turned his sudden ire on the old chef. "Screw that too! There's no way I'm going to be hooked up to this place that long!" Zeff scratched his ear and continued. "But I have to wonder, you know as well as I do that that brat couldn't nail one board to another, much less fix something like this. So, why'd you suggest it?" He asked, eliciting more and nosier growling from the young pirate as he ignored his thirtieth denial.

The Prof. showed no signs of worry at either the rubber man's distress, or the chef's question. He just smiled widely and straightened his jacket.

"Because I've taken a liking to this young man. And besides that, he seems to have eaten one of those devil fruit things you were just talking about. Am I right?" He motioned to Luffy. Who momentarily stopped panicking to answer. Though he was pouting somewhat "Well yeah, I ate the Gum-Gum fruit, and that made me a rubber man. Even cannonballs bounce off me! Which is what I was _trying_ to do, but I slipped a little and missed." He explained to the area of space that Zeff resided in in a voice that was not exactly flattering to the man's intelligence.

The Professor continued as he began walking forwards to one of the many piles of wooden planks and holes in the wall that had been scattered around the room, both from the original explosion, and the rather strenuous effect of a body of mass being thrown into the remaining unbroken ones at what would have been break-neck speeds. If the neck in question was capable of being broken that is, as he now understood. "Yes, see I t- wait, that's what happened?! Why on earth would you be-" He turned round and stared incredulously at the young pirate. Who for his part, just smiled at him again. "…Never mind, there are more important things at hand. Now. What I was saying is that while you want to have your ship repaired and have Luffy here own up for his, uh, slip. But that's being held up due to:" He reach the pile and crouched down while reaching into his coat.

"Luffy here. Now what he obviously wants, is to be King of The Pirates. By the way, what exactly does that mean? Actually, don't answer that. Yet. But what he seems to want right now is to get out of here in the shortest time possible, and the only ways he can do that is if you actually agree to let him off in no less then five days. Which, judging by the way his 'bargaining' has been going, is more likely to get him stranded here even longer than that." He seemed to be doing something with the wooden planks, attracting the interest of the other two people In he room.

"Now here's where I come in." He said, blowing dust off of something and wiping his dirk off with a small, oily-looking cloth. "What I want is to study the world around me, and these 'devil fruits'. And what I have is a friendly young lad right in front of me who needs a favour to continue perusing his dream on schedule, and who has happened to have some first hand experience with one." He stood up, brushing himself off and straitening his suit. "What I also have is some experience in the field of carpentry" He stepped aside to reveal a rather nicely patched up, for the time, condition, and tools he had, wall. The repairs were fairly rudimental in design, but they held up as The Prof. leaned on them, and as Zeff and Luffy walked closer, they could see some small fair etching in the wood, likely some kind of personal touch added out of habit, small leafy spirals and a couple of triangles here and there.

Luffy was the first to react. " Ah. So, You're going to repair the room for me and join my crew." He said sagely, rubbing his chin in the absence of a beard. He was then punted directly through the newly repaired wall by a freshly enraged Zeff. "You idiotic brat! Your brain must be made of rubber if you think I'm going to let you go that easily!" The Prof. Winced and stared for a moment in silent morning of his wall before moving on as the rubber boy stuck his head through the newly opened hole with a glare at Zeff and a questioning face at the Prof.

"Well, that's not exactly what I was thinking Luffy. It was more along the lines of me helping you by showing you _how_ to repair wood, more then me doing it myself." He thought for a moment. "And I don't remember asking to join your crew. I just got here after all, I'm not exactly ready to go looking to make myself an enemy of the World Government." He said, going to help the young man through the remains of the wall.

Luffy just grinned wider as he clasped the man's proffered hand. "Well that's too bad, 'cause I've already decided you're going. Oh and thanks, it's gonna be pretty cool to add some more style to this ship." The Prof. wasn't entirely sure if the boy's head wasn't over sixty percent mouth with the way he was smiling.

The Prof. Looked at the boy with an eyebrow raised "Ignoring the fact that I haven't even said anything on the subject, why in the world would you even would you even want me on a pirate ship? I'm just an old man son." He said. Though he had the feeling that none of his protests would matter in the end, he still wanted to know the Young captain's reasoning.

Luffy laughed as though the whole thing was blatantly obvious. "Well That's the point! Every Pirate ship needs a cool old guy!" He thought for a moment. "It's a tradition." He stated as grandly as he could, what with the collection of fresh wood chips hanging off him and general unimpressive quality of his appearance.

Zeff snorted. "I can tell you that it is most certainly not a tradition brat, so I'd suggest you stop trying to get the Prof. To join your crew, he's already offered you something to help you out, you should be grateful for that. If I was the only one here, I can tell you truthfully that you would not have had anyway out of this."

Luffy seemed to not hear the rest of his statement and focused entirely on the first part of the old Chef's statement. "Oh yeah? And how would you know that, you're a cook, not a pirate. You'd only know about like, cook stuff, not the mysterious ways of the pirate." He suddenly looked solemn and actually bowed! "But I do respect your profession sir" He said with the utmost seriousness. Now both of the Prof.'s eyebrows were attempting to make it look like they had never been there.

Zeff snorted, at least the boy knew proper respect for a chef. "Well I'd think I know a little a being a pirate you rubbery brat. Seeing as how I once sailed the Grand Line as one." He finished with only a faint hint of smugness.

Now the reactions of the two other men in the room were a little different. The Prof. was somewhat interested, but mostly looked like he wanted this segue to be over with so he could continue, though after a moment he looked thoughtful. Luffy on the other hand, had almost entirely changed his attitude, and was now staring at the old chef like he was some kind of precious metal, at least going by the shine in his eyes.

"That's, so, cool! I can't believe an old geezer like you sailed on the Grand Line once!" He laughed.

"Careful brat, it's still up to me how you get through your debt." Zeff said menacingly moving his peg leg meaningfully.

The Prof. decided to speak up before the chef and Luffy, by proxy, ended up creating another hole that he would have to help patch.

"If I can manage to get the young Captain to finish the repairs to the _Baratie_ would you let him off Zeff?" The Prof. asked, hoping that they would actually stop making a bigger mess and just start on the main thing quickly

The former pirate turned chef stopped moments before attempting another kick play, and thought. Though the Prof. remained cool, he was still concerned. If Zeff decided to enforce his first demand, then the boy would be significantly more tied down and not as available for conversation or leaning as much as the Prof. would like. That and the fact that, while he had no idea when the _Baratie_ would dock next , it was definitely going to be a lot sooner then a full years time from today. And when that happened, he would be dropped off on a random isle with no immediate way to the Grand Line and no one with a devil-fruit to research. Though Siegfried held no doubt that he would not be able to find anyone like Luffy again, even if he somehow managed to come across another devil-fruit or a user.

He looked to his side and could see in the boy similar feelings to his own, it was extremely easy to read his body as it stared unwaveringly at the concentrated cook. The boy was endearingly earnest. Frankly, he was a bit happy that the boy had taken such a strong liking to him. He was the second person in as many days in the new world that reminded him of one of his sons, after Sanji. He chuckled softly to himself. Calvin certainly would have gotten along swimmingly with Luffy. He was always reading such about such fantastic worlds like the one he had somehow ended up in.

Now that he thought about it, this was going to bring up some major discussion in the civilized world's community. Someone traveling to another world was only a fantasy, myth. Let alone if there actually _where_ other worlds.

Let alone if there actually _where_ a way home.

That was something he would have to think very hard about.

He was yanked out of his troubled musings as Zeff coughed and opened his eyes.

"Alright brat, Prof, You've gotten yourselves a deal. But I will be taking your cabin until you've finished the reconstruction. I'm sorry but the captain needs a warm place to sleep, if he falls ill, the entire ship will be thrown into chaos. A small lesson for you, ya brat." Though the chef sounded aggravated, the Prof. could see a faint curl to the right side of his mouth. The chef was clearly happy to have reached a compromise with the boy. Especially since it favoured him.

The Prof. let out short quick exhale of relief. This was going surprisingly well. For being thrown against your will into a strange world.

Luffy's sigh of relief was so much more obvious that the Prof. could swear that it's wind had pushed his hair and beard. "Man that had me worried! I thought I'd end up chained here for sure." He grinned again and reached his hand up to hold his hat. "Thanks Prof!"

"Well that's that then." The Prof. said pleasantly, the man's mood was infectious. "We'll start early tomorrow, I need a while to secure some resources and tools. Not to mention brushing up on my carpentry. If you'll excuse us Head chef I'll be taking Luffy and going to- Sweet mother of metal!" He shouted as the floor right in front of him, Zeff, and Luffy was suddenly broken apart by a bloody whitish-pink thing, that vaguely resembled a man went hurtling out of the hole in the roof only to land again just half in it seconds later. Through the hole, they all heard a bellow of rage

" **Get back down here you piece of crap! I haven't finished kicking your worthless ass yet! If you think it's okay to waste food like that, then maybe I s** ho **uld show you what it** fee **ls li** k **e to, b** e. , burned, to a crisp **.** Ugh"

It was unmistakably the voice of Sanji, though it was slightly distorted, and it faded slightly and grew more tiered with every word. The trio looked at each other for a quick moment before they all rushed for the stairwell, each for slightly different reasons that ultimately came down to the same thing. Whatever Sanji was, or had been doing to the beaten body had to be found out.

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* * *

 _ **)**_

Luffy was the first one out. As he bounded down the stairs, the first thing he saw was the generous dining room he had been dragged through earlier. It was a massive beautifully decorated place, with white stone wall and white-blue tile stone floor. Luffy wasn't much one for interior design, unless he was the one doing it, but he did notice that the room was mostly the same, with just a couple of notable differences.

One: Everyone was crowded together now. With the exception of some chef guys that were rushing toward the yelling guy.

Two: His crew were just walking in, Usopp's knees were vibrating, Nami's was covering her mouth, and Zoro had drawn one of his three swords and was wearing half of a vicious looking grin

Three: One part of the magnificent dining hall had everything in it's vicinity broken, cracked, torn apart, ruined, or otherwise smashed, with the exception of two bowls of soup, one table,, one woman, and one, man? Luffy could tell that it was definitely a man, but there was something else that he couldn't quite see there in the same place too, and it felt tough. Just before he got a decent view of it though, be blinked, and it was gone, and the man started to sway slightly. Then he had something more pressing to him as the momentary distraction of fallowing the Blond man's swaying allowed one of the steps to trip him.

Before he went tumbling head over heels, he gave a brief deathly glare at the offending step. He would remember it, he would find it, and he would… Violently dismantlatey it.

Yeah, that sounded badass.

 _ **)**_

* * *

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As The Prof. watched Luffy turn his head to the side and stare for just a moment before he tripped himself over a step he was worried. Not so much for Luffy, he had personally seen him walk away perfectly alright from much worse. But for Sanji. While he had been able to see that the young man had a great deal of potential rage inside his otherwise calm exterior, it had been much more tame than this. As he came into view and saw Sanji beginning to sway slightly, he could feel the remainder of whatever just happened disappear back into whence it came. But he had still felt it.

He had _felt it_.

It had been _palpable_.

He realized as he reached the point of the spiralling stairwell just what had caused Luffy to stare with such concentration as he gave it a quick scan himself, though he took care to not trip over the same offending step. _He_ wasn't mad of rubber after all. The Prof. then thought to himself if he had ever thought the would come when he would think that and have an example of someone who was.

There were three people by the entrance. They were all in their teenage years, two boys and a girl.

The first boy was wearing brown overalls with a bandana tied around his head as a makeshift hat. And his face, well. The Prof. didn't want to make the comparison, but he looked as if Pinocchio had turned into a real boy before his magical facial surgery. His knees also seemed to have been linked to a power generator with the way they were moving.

The girl seemed normal, with a pink shirt and orange skirt, though if her face had an unusual amount of prettiness and deviousness, it was currently wiped away as her hand was clasped over her mouth in what looked like shock, but that was just a quick glance from metres away. Besides that, the one that was really attracting his attention was the second man.

He was wearing a white shirt with dark green pants and boots, and there was a piece of cloth of the same colour wrapped around his left bicep. But that wasn't what was commanding his eyes. No, that would have to down to three things. The first would be the young man's Swords. Oddly, only did he carry ones that seemed to carry a resemblance to the fashion of more eastern blade designs, but he also held _three_ of them. One in each hand and another held in his _mouth_. That in and of itself was not particularly strange, the strange part was that his body seemed so used to it that the Prof. was forced to assume that he always fought like that. Which only brought up more questions. Why would someone only carry swords in a civilisation where ranged gunpowder weapons were easy to come by.

The second thing was that his hair, while green, was not like any he had seen at the university. Strangely enough, it seemed natural. That was certainly a first.

The third thing about him was his face, he wore a ferocious grin through the white handled sword clasped in his teeth, like a battle hungry predator staring at some kind of rival. The Prof. fallowed his gaze to the object that the tri-wielding swordsman was looking at. As he had thought when he heard through the floor boards, it was Sanji. The young chef was swaying slightly and giving off a very faint amount of steam, the Prof. noted that he still had the small pipe he had given him in his mouth with a short mental nod of appreciation, though he hoped that the cook would be alright enough to thank him. If he had figured out what the purpose of the blend was anyway.

As the party of three reached the bottom, some more quickly then others, their presence was noted almost immediately. The dinners all turned to the trio with some assorted glances of hope, anger, and relief at the appearance of the trio. Though the rubbery mass that came out first and bounced out towards the entrance was met with some considerable confusion. As the authoritative presence of the head chef arrived, Patty, Carne and the other cooks that looked somewhat battered were inspired to make what they assumed was another attempt at restraining the formerly enraged blond cook. But when they grabbed on, there was none of the terrifying thrashing that had occurred the last time. Instead, the young cook just slumped over in their hold.

Panting and sweating, Patty and Carne acted as spokesmen for the whole dinning room.

"Owner Zeff!" They called over their shoulders, specking in turn and still nervous to lose the grasp they had gained on the boy. "Sanji's gone and done it again! He went on another of his rampages, but this time it was directly on a marine lieutenant! We tried to stop him, but he just batted us away before we could do anything. And look at the mess he's made this time! Even if that marine survived that beating, there's no way we won't be reported once this gets back to any marine base in the area!"

Zeff walked over to the slumped over sous-chef, looked around the relatively, for Sanji, small mass of destruction, and for an almost unnoticeable moment, let his gaze rest on the shell-shocked looking woman and the perfectly undisturbed table she sat at. He quickly drew his eyes back to Sanji.

"Well boy, what's your excuse this time, eh?" He asked in the same gruff tone that he always used. As the Prof. walked slowly towards the group, Luffy came to a halt once the green haired swordsman, his swords now sheathed, stomped on his midsection. Eliciting a pained yell and an loud argument between the two on proper etiquette for stopping someone's rolling projectile speed.

"Owner Zeff! No! Not again! You can't seriously be letting him off again like this after what he did this time!" Patty yelled at the venerable chef. Disbelief clear on his, and most of the other present cooks. However, he remained impassive to them, instead looking intently at the young cook in the black suit.

" _he….st…ru…..end….fo…d_ " The blond whispered out. Not in a pained voice, but one that was strangely exhausted.

"What's that? Speak up you worthless brat, I can't decide what to do with you if you can't tell me what happed first." Zeff said in a slightly aggravated tone. As he did so, The Prof. had arrived at the scene and the argument between the two young men at the door way had expanded to the other two members of the group. Some words overheard clearly, included such things as: "Cook' 'no you idiot' 'what the hell was that' 'I want to fight it' 'new crew' 'cool old guy' 'carpentary" And "A musician"

Sanji shakily shifted his posture upright and lifted his head, and surprised the entire population of the ship as he did so when the young cook turned out to be crying. As miniature waterfalls formed on his face, he responded with more force and volume to the old man's question, though there was still a noticeable tiredness to his voice.

"That bastard I kicked through the roof, he was going to. He _did_ , the blood. The bug, the bug's blood. It fell into the Consommé. I could smell it, that vile bitterness, it spread through the soup. I didn't move him fast enough. That horrible clashing flavour. _I can still taste it_ " He made to yank his arm out of Carne's grip, but failed, shocking the man in question so much that he let go anyway. Sanji quickly pinched his nose shut before continuing. The Prof.'s eyebrows raised like the sun at dawn in an alarmed look of understanding and he began to quickly move over to the entirely undisturbed table that held the soup in question and the disturbed looking woman sat.

The dramatics of Sanji's fallowing speech were somewhat dulled by the fact that his voice had taken on a distinctly non-drama tally suited tone thanks to him pinching his nose. "That soup is a work of art, and that piece of crap marine officer ruined it just because he couldn't look big in fount of a bunch of strangers. Plus he disrespected a cook on a ship, and all of you should know how much of a death sentence that is on the seas." He opened his nose and took in a deep breath before closing it again and wiped his eyes. "Everyone on this ship slaved over that masterpiece at least once, it was a symbol of our pride as cooks. And now it's gone to waste all because of one arrogant bastard. He should be thankful I got tired out of nowhere. Now if you're done interrogating me and trying to cut off the circulation to my limbs, I'd like to get back the kitchen. There's food that's going to burn if you idiots don't get back to your stations." He said, as the other cooks, too shocked at what they'd seen and felt to do anything else, simply let the young cook go and quietly went back to their stations. Some when to comfort the customers and prevent another inter-table war from breaking out. But they were all of them shell-shocked to a man at seeing the terrifying force of foot related pain made manifest and called Sanji actually shedding saltwater.

Sanji stood still for a moment, staring at the old man in front of him with a resigned expression, as though he was expecting him to try and knock his jaw off at any moment.

But the old man didn't move, he just stood their impassively, his massive toque creating a long shadow over his face.

Sanji stood until there was a growling sound like an earthquake. Everyone including Sanji quickly whipped around trying to divine the source of the frightful sound. Until Sanji stopped and looked down at himself with a dejected look. It had been his stomach, audible for the first time in what seemed like a decade. He was forced to turn back around when a loud and gruff laugh exploded, and he couldn't believe he was seeing it, Zeff.

The old pirate cook wiped a tear of mirth out of the corner of his eye as he waked up to Sanji, and, still laughing, smacked him on the back hard enough that in his mysteriously weakened state, sent him flying forward several paces. Eliciting another laugh, this time from the green haired swordsman that he had just noticed. The Mosshead looked like an idiot, and if he hadn't been so dreadfully hungry, he would have gone over and kicked his ass

"Get on with yourself you brat! You're right about one thing, we need to get cooking, and by the raucous sound of it. I'd say that you could use a meal yourself. I'll decide what to do with you after the dinner rush." The old man laughed, and walked over the crowd to prevent further patrons from declaring their own countries in his ship. " _Honestly, why did that keep happening?"_ He thought.

Sanji was, to put it bluntly, shocked. He had ended up taking his fingers off his nose in an attempt to balance himself, and ended up taking in a sharp inhale to recover the wind knocked out of him. When he did so, he got another ship wide image of smells that once again almost overwhelmed him before he took the reigns and forced his scent down to his immediate area. Though as he did so, he was forced to inhale the horrible smell of the ruined Consommé. But oddly, there was no horrible bitterness ruining the near perfect aroma of the thin soup, and he could tell that the woman who was still sitting at the table was no longer terrified.

It still weirded him out that he could tell that just from her scent now.

He then realized that whatever had scared this beauty so much must have been his fault. Well, the marine's fault. Either way, he decided to walk over, slowly,, he still felt weak,, and reassure her that all was well.

"Ah, Sanji. Come over for a moment will you?" It was the Prof.'s bass voice. Curious, Sanji came over to the table. As he approached, he was greatly relived to not find a single trace of the bitter blood of the insect, other then what residue hung on the air. As well as the fact that the former date of lieutenant asshole was currently smiling pleasantly as he approached, her bowl was empty. At this combination of sights, Sanji's heart practically leapt from his chest. However he managed to prevent it before it tore out of his ribs.

"What do you want Prof?" He asked as he reached the table, mechanically lighting up his… pipe. Whatever.

The Prof. smiled warmly, a little _too_ warmly. "Could you take a seat? I need to discuss some things with you. But first, this young lady has something to say to you." He gestured to the woman in question as Sanji sat down.

She was blushing heavily as she started to speak. "Oh! I, um, I just wanted to thank you Sous-Chef! This soup was absolutely delicious! It's the best thing that I've tasted in years. Simply a masterpiece! I also wanted to apologise for Fullbody. I had no idea he would try to do something so awful just for being embarrassed a little, he would have hit me with his those iron knuckles that he was always wearing when I tried to get him to calm down if you hadn't stopped him. So don't worry your selves, I have the number for the marine base that he was posted at, and I know that they won't be pleased to hear how he behaved, and I'm sure that I can get them to pay for the damages." She giggled a little at Sanji's grateful face before continuing. "And I'd also like to thank your dear Professor, he helped me get out of my shock and encouraged me to eat that wonder that your kitchen created. So again, thank you My dear Sous-Chef!" She exclaimed before doing a little curtsy to the both of them and going off towards Chef Zeff.

Sanji turned to the Prof. and gave him a tired looking smile. "Huh, guess you're not such a pain after all Prof. Thanks."

The Professor, for his part accepted the young man's thanks and waved Luffy and the people who were presumably the crew he had mentioned.

"Oh don't mention it. Now, I believe you deserve a little bit of information regarding that pipe. Or more specifically, the blend inside of it. But first I'd like you to eat this delightful consommé." He motioned to the bowl formerly belonging to the lieutenant. "And If you're about to ask why when it was ruined, don't worry. I discovered that, due to being untouched, and the fact that this exact position in the dinning room allows six different air streams to meet in this exact spot, the Consommé had gotten just enough of a skin to catch and isolate the blood before it could spread to the rest of the broth, and I have since removed the infected part and tossed it out the window."

Sanji's curiosity was fully awake, as well as his appetite. His body was still a little asleep though, so he fallowed the Prof.'s request and took the proffered bowl and drank much to his surprise with an enormous enthusiasm. His eyes started to water again. It was even better then it had tasted earlier, it was an enormous honour just to partake in it, and as the delicately flavoured broth slid gently past his mouth, he could feel and imagine every ingredient and part of the entire process that had gone into creating the beauty of the soup. It was meaty, so much so that even though it was just a liquid, you could swear that it could be chewed like it was a fine piece of sirloin steak, and every spice that was infused to the broth only added to the heavenly texture of the flavour.

As the last of the broth slipped past his tongue, he was still thinking about how every single part of the soup was being processed and recreated into new energy and cells for his tired body. He could feel lightning running all over his body as the wonderful broth refreshed him.

He felt truly honoured to have partaken in such a wonderful meal.

The Professor smiled at him as the Luffy had finally gotten that the signal was more then just friendly waving and was attempting to convince his companions to come over with him. Only the swordsman seemed like he wanted to go see the Prof. The other two seemed like they didn't even want to be in the same general area of space as the Blond cook.

"Now about that blend" The Prof. Started to say, before Sanji interrupted him by holding up a finger and sniffing. "What is it?" The Professor asked as the young man got up and started running towards the door. Meeting Luffy's group before Luffy's group could agree on going to meeting him. The Long-nose and the other one jumped aside screaming in terror that faded away to confused 'huh?'s as he ran past, though Sanji spared a moment to gave a quick glare at the Moss-head. He'd get him for that laugh.

Reaching the doors, he grabbed the handles of one, and before opening it slightly, called back to the professor quietly enough that he wouldn't have to have any customers hear.

"Blood."

 _ **(**_

* * *

 _ **)**_

 _ **Author's Words:**_

" **Long chapter huh? Nothing much to say except that this time. Well a couple things anyway. Some of you might be wondering what happened to chapter one a while ago. Well rather embarrassingly, I didn't connect what the days countdown on my documents meant and one of the chapter docs disappeared. Don't worry though, I was alerted to this thanks to one** _ **archerofblades**_ **, who helpfully pointed out the discrepancy, and the chapter is back up and edited a little to boot. Give him a hand guys!"**

" **Now for review answers:** _ **Miniwolfy2**_ **: You know, I actually forgot that he smoked a pipe in that special, thanks for the reminder and encouragement. Though the pipe that The Professor gave him is more akin to a cigarette in size and appearance, and unfortunately, depending on how you look at it anyway, you'll have to wait until the next chapter to find out."**

" _ **SoulAuron**_ **: That's exactly what I was thinking dude! Thanks! Actually, when it comes to powers, I was heavily inspired by stories like** _ **JoJo's Bizarre Adventure,**_ **a couple of particularly creative Fanfics, and some** _ **Dungeons and Dragons**_ **tales I read for creative power usage. Oh, and** _ **Toriko**_ **and, of course,** _ **One Piece**_ **too."**

" _ **B2516**_ **: Thanks for reviewing again so soon. To answer your questions**

 **1: I'm still not entirely sure. I've seen some great examples of this, take for one that you've probably all heard of;** _ **This Bites!**_ **But for most other examples that I've read, it just seems to over fill the story with what amount to permanent background characters. So for question one: I don't know.**

 **2: Most certainly. Don't worry though. I have a rule that if an idea I have for a Straw Hat doesn't make me laugh out loud with it's brilliance, it's not very likely to be put in.**

 **3: Maaaaaybe…"**

" **Finally, thanks to everyone else that gave me encouragement to put out this, for my work, beast of a chapter. All of you have been so helpful with your comments, and your criticisms have all been very helpful for looking at my flaws and addressing them. Until next time:"**

 _ **B . R. III**_


	9. Meeting The Straw-Hats

Prof. Pirate Chapter 7: Meeting the Straw-Hats.

" **Just a quick word to retuning readers. I've been doing some edits to a few of the earlier chapters. So if any of you get confused on a continuity error, it's probably because I've been doing some fiddling with those early bits that will hopefully improve the quality. So I'd very much recommend checking out some of those again.**

 **Sorry if I ended up causing any confusion guys. Also, moving takes a while."**

 **-B. R. III**

As Sanji silently slipped out the main door, Luffy's group seemed to have finally made up their minds on where they were going, namely, the Prof's table. The Prof. smiled as he heard Luffy excitedly talking about, well he wasn't entirely sure, but he seemed to enjoy whatever he was talking about nonetheless. His companions were listening with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

"-And that's why I think that that Chef guy might be the perfect cook for the crew!" His reaction to The Prof. gave the man the impression that he'd been so enamoured with talking about whatever he had been talking about with his three companions that he seemed as if he'd not seen him while being only a few metres from the table. "Oh hey Prof! These guys are my crew!" He gestured excitedly at the three around him.

Now that they were much closer, the Prof. found that he could finally get a decent read on the young captain's three colourful compatriots. His quick bright green eyes quickly roamed over the three in short order. Quickly noting whatever he could in short time, things like appearance, personalities, current mood, likely past experiences, and possibilities for exchanges of knowledge were all laid bare before the aged green sparks that were his eyes.

"Good afternoon." The Prof. said pleasantly in his deep voice, with a warm smile shining out from his now well combed beard. "Come, sit down and I'll do my best to explain why your adventure will be put on hold for a few days." The trio seemed pleasantly surprised at his welcome greetings as they acquiesced to his request and sat down. He made a note of that. He also made a note of how each crew member chose their seats at the round dining table, the girl oddly enough, sat at his immediate left, while Luffy sat at his right.

"Now then, first, introductions. As your friend Luffy has no doubt told you, my Name is Professor Siegfried E. R. Thorson, and I have taken an interest in your group due to your captain's… Well how do I put this." He stroked his beard for a moment in thought of a word to describe the oddness of the young lad. "Elasticity" He finally put down. "So, in the interests of whatever situations we may find ourselves in, I should like to ask you your names, and what roles you fill on your crew, small as it seems to be." He finished in his kindly fashion.

The Pinocchio-esque lad was the first to answer as he assumed a cocky posture from his seat and jabbed a thumb at his chest. "Well if you're looking for names, then behold one that will someday soon echo across the seas as an adjective for greatness! I am the mighty warrior Ussop! And I happen to be the marksman of this fine crew." He made an attempt at coolly leaning back in his chair, only to flop around like so much al dente pasta as it overbalanced and dumped him onto the floor in a manner that was quite lacking the dignity that he was trying so hard to show. Though the Prof. wasn't normally taken to laughter at another man's embarrassment, the whole thing was so perfectly timed that he couldn't help but let out a quiet chuckle.

A sentiment that the others at the table, with the exception of one seemed to follow, though quietly probably wasn't the right word.

"Yeah! He's actually our marksman!" Luffy laughed. "He's also a really good artist, he actually painted our flag. Oh yeah, and he's also a liar." He added as Ussop snapped up off the floor. "Oh I'm a liar huh? Well at least I'm not a rubber brained idiot that got himself into debt just 'cause he couldn't aim." He responded snidely. Eliciting an angry shout of protest from the rubbery young man as they started to square off into an argument as the green-haired swordsman laughed even harder at the pair, as they started to exchange more and more ridiculous insults, before the ginger girl began screaming at the duo.

"Well then, good." He said, filing away all the mental notes he'd taken after the shouting had abated, surprisingly following some seemingly light slaps from the girl he now knew as Nami,, among them the sometimes screamed names of the formerly unnamed crew members. "Now that that's done with, I can move on to the explanation on what your apparent captain has gotten himself into." He said as he called the other three's attentions back to the prior conversation.

"Now then, the situation at hand. I've managed to help Luffy here get out of a possible year-long working debt, but only with the promise that he'll provide repairs to the damages himself with only minimal help." He took a short pause to evaluate the mood before continuing. "That's where I come in. One of the minor conveniences that I've learned over my long life is carpentry, and I'm going to be instructing him in the use of those same skills to the best of what I can offer." He finished, though he grew slightly concerned about his future teaching endeavours as he watched the formerly curious attitude of the young man's friends turn to a nervously wary glance at the oblivious youth. The Prof. got the message, however unintentionally it had been delivered.

Shaking away his concerns, The Prof. soldiered on through the explanations. "Well. Um. Regardless of how well the actual lessons will go, I would expect to have, at the most, four days of solid work done before Luffy's repairs are completed." He cast a wry glance at the young captain. "Regardless of final quality." This earned an understanding nod and a couple sighs of relief from various members of the table, and a giant smile from one.

"That's awesome Professor!" Luffy shouted, before he turned to his companions with a smug look. "See guys? I told you he'd be a great pick for the crew, I could have been staying here for years if that geezer chef dude got what he wanted." He laughed "And you were all saying 'Luffy you idiot, you can't just take some random person you found in a restaurant into your crew just because you thought he was cool'. I mean, if I listened to that kinda' stuff, none of you guys would be here. " He finished with yet another record breaking smile.

The young swordsman that The Prof. now knew as Zoro leaned forward, face somewhat flushed in embarrassment and anger. However the desire for debate, perhaps debate not so much inclined towards the verbal, on the young swordsman's face clearly crumbled as he hesitated and looked to reconsider what his captain had just said, and as his prepared response, be it physical or no, broke apart, he instead grumbled a barely audible and mildly aggravated response that sounded like it was repressing a large amount of frustration and personal embarrassment. The Professor had spent a long time getting to know how to interpret mumbling and grumbling, he had helped raise seven teenagers after all. It was at this point that the oddly familiar mixture of conversation and argument was fully unleashed on the unfortunate woodwork of the restaurant, anything and everything else, save, if the Prof. guessed right about Luffy, food, was quickly ignored.

The Professor leaned back in his chair as the arguments fell and laughter rose like a circular wave around the table. He was not being ignored, he could tell that. Instead, as he observed that what he had expected to be a small session of information passing, he found that he was included in the various conversations in some small way. An elbow's nudge here, or a quick question to be answered, with one's cheers and one's lament as he confirmed it in a quiet response. The curt, business-like attitude he had prepared had turned out to be entirely unnecessary, as the young people around him had quite amusingly turned the atmosphere around them into something that felt familiar, like something out of his long memory. For a moment, the old man let the rowdy sounds of friendly argument and laughter wash over him as he was subsumed in a haze of quiet nostalgia for a time long since passed.

However, before he could properly dwell on this, he was shaken out of his contemplation by the return of Sanji. After opening the door, the blond chef walked in with what The Prof. had noted to be his usual graceful stride. Graceful that is, until he stopped short, jolted straight and slapped his hand to his nose with a pained grunt. A mere few seconds passed as the Prof. watched Sanji, though he was sure the young man's thoughts on the time passed in that instance would probably be viable for discussion on theories of relativity.

As it was though, the raucous noise coming mostly from the young captain continued to mingle with the now far calmer sounds of a relatively normal restaurant, and still seemingly no one else had noticed the blond chef come in. Though maybe some had chosen to ignore his presence for the moment, due to what the people in the dinning room had just witnessed, The Prof. decided that perhaps this was not without warrant.

He continued to watch Sanji as the young man gingerly attempted to relax his stiff body, and after succeeding in this, walked to the kitchen. Though his legs were still a bit stiff, and his hand was still desperately clasped against his nose.

The Professor turned back to his seated company while the kitchen doors still swung back and forth, and waited to hear the beginning of a lull in the conversation. It ended up testing his patience a fair bit more then what the simple act of politely waiting to interject should have been, but he had been through far more trying periods in his life; one had been clothes shopping with his new bride. The other had involved lava. With these simple reminders, our dear Prof. found the resolve to continue forward until he had found his opening. And soon he did, whereupon he asked to the young, excitable, loud, and apparent pirate captain, in the split second that his seemingly endless cascade of words had drained to a mere trickle, mostly due to the meat that now held his attention:

"Luffy, I believe I heard you mention your desire to have Sanji join your expedition to the grand line, am I correct?" He inquired to the straw-hatted boy. The boy paused in his conversation and grinned widely.

"Yep!" He responded with an enthusiasm that was becoming apparent it would not be leaving anytime soon. "See, I figured that we needed a chef 'cause if you don't get a balancing act with your meals then you'd get scarvey, and the only way to get ride of scarves would be to eat lemons and limes, 'cause Yosaku was wearing one when we totally didn't shoot our cannon at him. And lemons and limes are kinda gross so you'd have to get someone who's really good at cooking to get 'em right to eat. And if you need the best chef to cook the limes then you'd have someone who'd also cook the meat, and you need to have meat 'cause it's the most important meal of the day. Then we could have every thing from pork chops to steak to chicken to fishes, and fishes go really good with lemons so we could have them without needing to make lemonade, but that would still leave the limes and I don't know what to do with those. I mean we did kinda save Yosaku with them but we just stuffed them in his mouth and I don't think I ever heard of someone making lime-o-nade and that chef guy seems like he'd really know all kinds of things on what to do with limes, plus that would get us someone who knows how to make really good meat without charging their captain for the food."

Here he stopped his tirade for a moment to glare pointedly at the ginger-haired girl, who broke out of her sympathetic looks at the Prof. and responded cheekily with 'A girls gotta make a living you know.' The Professor only had time to think that he might want to watch his wallet around her before Luffy's mouth resumed it's very accurate impression of a waterfall and cascaded yet more words into the Prof's ever more bedraggled eardrums.

"So anyway, I think that that chef guy looks really cool, even if I mostly saw the stairs when he was beating up that marine jerk, and by the way it's his fault that I hit the cannon ball into the roof, not mine, because I think that if he could see how much of a jerk that guy is too then he's defiantly a cool guy but I don't know if that chef guy can cook meat right yet so I'm going to do an investigation while I'm working at carpeting that old geezer's roof, and if he's really good then he can come with us to the grand lime, I mean line. So if we get a cook then the kitchen will be warm so the guys that get sick won't need scarves, and then we won't need limes 'cause we'd just use the lemons on the fish that we could catch on the Grand lime, I mean line, that is the sea, not the fishing line, that would just be weird though right? But maybe it would be really cool, A Grand Fishing Line, I bet I could catch a sea-king with that. Do you think they taste differently depending on what they look like? See, If we had a cook I could find that out! And that's why I think that that Chef guy might be the perfect cook for the crew!" He finished with a satisfied face.

The Prof. realized that he might have found out why some of the man's companions had had that odd expression as they walked over to the table, it was clear that the lad would not stop his attempts to gather another crew member. Also felt three slight twinges of horror in the back of the decades long peace he had cultivated in his mind. The first was that he couldn't exactly find a hole in the boy's logic, though he hesitated to call it that. The second was that he realised that Luffy would no doubt attempt to coerce him into joining his expedition with the same circular reasoning that focused the young man on acquiring Sanji as his ship's cook.

The third was that he was probably going to have a much harder time teaching the boy then initially thought.

However, regardless of the mild horror circling in the back of his mind, The Professor had made a deal to teach Luffy to, at the very least, insulate the room against the weather, and Siegfried E. R. Thorson always kept his deals. Well, accept that one time, in Italy… With the girl, and that arrow… And those gangsters. But that was a matter of principal.

He was about to respond to the young captain, hopefully with a question that could probe the boy's reasoning to make that bit of reasoning a tad less doughnut-shaped, when Sanji, now equipped with two plates of scrumptious looking fried rice in his hand, a roll of what looked like bandages, and a rather tight looking laundry pin clamped firmly on his nose, walked with however much dignity a man with a clothespin on his face could walk, back out threw the door.

The Prof. was surprised, digging out his watch, now cleaned of seawater, he found that less than a pair of minutes had passed since the young had gone in and stepped back out. What's more, from the short glance and whiff of flavour that he had gotten, he was sure that those dishes were freshly cooked. Apparently Luffy's appraisal of the chef's skill in the kitchen had proven to be, much like everything else he had found out about the young captain, both surprising, and surprisingly accurate.

Putting this into the mental ever-growing file of things about Luffy that surprised him, a file he imagined would some day warrant it's own mental vault, The Prof. rouse and made his excuses for the table.

"Well now that you've mentioned him, I was actually just going to check on my young acquaintance. As I recall, the last thing he mentioned before heading on his way out was; 'Blood' or something like it. So as that stands I would wish to excuse myself from this table, though, if any of you were to order anything, I would highly recommend the day's soup. Though I have regrettably not sampled it myself, I have it on good authority that it's flavour could reasonably reside in a pantheon." He turned to Luffy. "I should like to continue our.. Interesting conversation soon. Though riveting as it was to hear your veritable thesis on the topic of sea-bound citrus and it's many uses, I know you understand that an old man can only take on so much information without being prepared to do so." With that he turned and walked to, and eventually following that, out, the wide double doors of the sea-bound café.

Stepping out to the ship's primary deck, he looked around a short while before managing to locate the young man with the curled brow. He was standing over two men that were both sitting cross-legged on the lower deck. One The Professor guessed was a marine, judging from the similarities to the ones that he had seen in some of the photos in the old newspaper he had taken to reading, quite probably a basic sea-man from his look and general feel of inexperience. He was blond, and surprisingly pale for a sailor, even if he was a bit green looking. He was also bared some fresh looking bandages on his person.

The other man was a huge change from the other, wearing a scruffy looking mixture of a sailor's suit and a tracksuit, he wore a headband that kept up equally scruffy looking hair, and his eyes were dark and ringed with what looked taken from many sleepless nights. The Prof. guessed that he was a pirate, or at the very least had some criminal experience

The two polar opposites stared at each other with mutual disgust and barely withheld vitriol. Sitting at both of their feet were gently steaming plates of fried rice, and above them loomed the blond still pipe-holding figure of Sanji.

The Professor wasn't sure what exactly had happened to lead to this strange scenario, but he had a small feeling that the answer was not going to help the gradual weariness he felt coming on.

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 _ **P.S: Author's notes will return next chapter.**_

 **B. R. III.**


	10. A Job Half-Done, Was At Least Well Begun

Prof. Pirate. Chapter 8: A Job Half-Done Was At Least Well Begun

" _ **Reports of my update schedule were greatly exaggerated."**_

 **-B. R. III.**

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The Straw Hat Pirates were currently still situated at their chosen table, and though their

"Hey Luffy, mind explaining why you're so set on getting that old guy onto the crew? I mean he seems nice and all, but isn't he a little old for a grand adventure on the high seas?" Came a confused question from Usopp.

"Well every really great pirate crew had an old guy on it right? You just have to have one." To Luffy, the answer was obvious, to Usopp, he was practically aghast.

"But don't you think we should know a little bit more this guy before you invite him? You can't seriously be saying that's all you need to take someone onto your crew? We don't even know where he comes from." The poor long-nosed boy asked in a voice that did little to show his mounting distress.

"Yep!" The young captain said, still smiling. "Plus he looks a lot like Shanks." He added, as if that was all the reason that anyone could ever want.

Usopp looked desperately around the table to anyone that might help him, but all he found was a despondent ginger attempting to avoid eye contact and a swordsman trying to hide his face in his drink.

All at once, Luffy's face took on a look of great concentration. "Actually, where did they go? I'm going to go find them, save some food for me!" And with that, he left the table at once and bounded over to the side doors that his two, presumable, subjects of attention had recently exited from.

Usopp rose in protest. "Luffy come on! It's none of our business what they're do-" Before he was forced back into his seat by the strong grip of Zoro, who, with his face no longer obscured by his drink, looked just a tad more serious than usual before he began to speak.

"I don't think there's going to be anything that you could do Usopp. You know what they called me before I joined this crew? Pirate Hunter, and that only made the idiot that much more exited to get me to join. Besides, the old guy seems alright." He paused while the younger man glumly considered his words before cracking a large grin. "Who knows; it might be nice to have someone else on the ship that's not a coward, an idiot, or so obsessed for money that they'd charge people on the brink of starvation for food." He finished sardonically.

The attitudes around the table changed immediately. "Oh like you're any better! You're the one that got yourself stabbed in a life or death battle just to show off how much blood you had!" Came a reply from the now irate ginger. Usopp appeared to be formulating a counter attack of his own, and with that his concerns where, for now, left behind for more 'Important' matters.

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Luffy was not, contrary to popular belief, unintelligent. On the contrary, he possessed a keen understanding of both a surprising number of subjects and his capabilities and limitations in them, and was, generally at least, fairly accurate in his summations.

So when he walked out onto the upper deck of the _Baratie_ and saw the Professor standing at the railing and seemingly watching something intently, Luffy decided to do something that was not at all what someone with less knowledge of the young man would expect him to do:

He stayed quiet.

With his patented 'Stealth mode' activated, Luffy approached the old man, and as he got closer, he could hear the unmistakable sounds of a man giving an impassioned speech with a stuffed nose. Or it could have been a sea-faring duck attempting an extended mating call. Either way, whatever was down there was clearly worth listening to in some capacity, and so, by pure logical reasoning, he decided that he had to find it's source.

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"-So just put your differences aside for now. After all, no matter what your ambitions are, if you die of starvation, there's no way you'll ever manage to reach them. I don't care if you want to kill each other, just do it after you eat." Sanji was making a noble attempt to convey to two men that achieving a armistice was a good idea to the best affect that he could, and he was doing quite well, considering he had a laundry pin clasped upon his nose. Beside the two men, were pistols of a strangely ancient design, one of which seem to have been discharged recently.

Siegfried was quite certainly intrigued by what he saw, intrigued and yet also somewhat befuddled as he methodically took in notes from the targets of his observations and their bedraggled appearances.

Here before him on the lower deck sat two men, one old and one young. One was wearing a headband and a jacket as clothing that seemed to have been worn on him for a while and was obviously a pirate of some years, and currently of a diminished constitution, likely due to starvation. The man had the innate feeling of a killer about him, and yet The Professor felt there might be something more, somewhere.

The other was a young bandaged marine with a similar, if not as severe, starved appearance and some kind of blood loss apparent to him, quite probably from his newly bandaged wounds, these Siegfried eyed over for a moment. So for that moment, let us take a brief glance into his mind.

" _He's sustained two shots to his arms, left is fully out of commission due to puncture wound but the muscles aren't irreparably torn, right received slight gashes and surface area cuts to a maximum deepness of 0.00156 centimetres, both should be expected recovery to be two to three days thanks to proper treatment from Sanji. The projectiles that caused this are of an uncommon shape, round ammo? Strange._

 _One ricocheted off his topmost right rib at an angle of approximately 6.4679 centimetres. Just a few off from skidding off the tip and tunnelling through his chest and into his heart, which is currently beating semi-regularly, probably from a recent release of adrenalin from his system."_

His eyes roamed from his wounds to the rest of the boy

" _This boy looks so green he's probably been plucked off his home branch less than half a year ago, So why is he here alone?"_ The Professor wondered to himself.

Tying both of these interesting appearances together like some kind of Gordian knot was a blond chef that had just finished an excellently employed verbal essay in an attempt to get the two seemingly starving men to eat the fine plates of fried rice and meat laid out before them without any goes at each other's throats due to the logically assumed animosity between their respective allegiances. And yet the weapons continued to frustrate him. If only he could get a closer look he could-.

"Oh hey Thorson! What's going on?" Siegfried was disappointed with himself, he'd let himself get so wrapped up in analysis that he forgot to remain aware of his surroundings. After the shock wore off, and he managed to avoid falling off the railing, he resolved to make sure not to let that happen again.

Likewise, the narrator resolved to attempt his best to not be interrupted by the exuberant lad in the future.

The Professor pressed out the resultant creases in his suit. "I've yet to divine the exact nature of how this scene came to be as it is Mr. Luffy, honestly I was watching to find out myself. Here, take a look yourself."

The younger man looked confused for a brief moment. "Why are you calling me mister? Oh hey, it's that chef guy!"

Siegfried chose to ignore the first bit, as much as it confused him, he decided to let it drift to the back of his mind for the moment as he saw that Sanji had walked away from his prior position and sat down against the railing a short distance away before lighting up a new cigarette and gingerly removing the laundry clip from his face, though he winced and coughed a bit as he did so.

The other two inhabitants of the lower deck seemed to keep switching their eyes from the plates of gently steaming food to each other's faces, both sweated and neither one seemed like they'd be willing to attempt a move before the other. They then promptly both collapsed on the deck. A few minutes passed before they, from their position on the floor, reached out to the food and began eating with a furious enthusiasm.

Siegfried was not unpleasantly surprised when he heard the lilting of gentle, grateful sobbing coming from the two formerly starving men as they ate. He knew the feeling well.

"Thank you! This is delicious. Thank you. Thank you so much, I thought I was going to die." The pirate sobbed out in-between shovelling in food.

"Of course it is. You're lucky I came out when I did you know. In the shape you're in, I can't imagine you'd get very far after your little fight with your marine friend over there, and I doubt Patty would allow in a non-paying customer, bastard that he is." Sanji nonchalantly replied as he finished taking a drag from his cigarette. "By the way kid, your arm should be good in a few days. You're either really lucky or really fast."

The boy, as The Professor could now see he was, was currently engaged in the process of inhaling the proffered plate of food as the chef finished his sentence, the boy then attempted to agree via vigorous nodding of the head. Unfortunately, he attempted to do this while still shovelling food in at that unprecedented rate, and that lead to a good few minutes of coughing on his part. Siegfried winced, getting rice caught in your repertory system was not an experience he ever wanted to repeat.

Siegfried looked back at the young man with the straw hat, mostly in an attempt to bury the memory of that one particularly large rice grain, when he noticed that the youth had once again donned his large smile.

"Hah! Looks like I found my chef!" He exclaimed excitedly while laughing. "You're both lucky he gave you some food. I thought you were goners!" He laughed and smiled still more. "So hey listen Mr. cook, why don't you leave this boat and join my crew?"

Sanji seemed more confused by the offer than anything as he looked up. "Huh? What are you talking about?"

"I could use a cook like you on my pirate ship." The young man beamed before leaping down to perch on the railing next to the trio.

"You're a pirate?" Sanji asked in an almost bemused tone. The older pirate sitting next to him just looked on from his finished dish in bewilderment at the young man.

"Yep!" He laughed. Though Siegfried could only see the topmost portion of his face, he still looked like just saying that was one of the greatest things the boy could experience. It seemed strange to him, even after Luffy's earlier declaration of pursuing a monarchic position over the nautical criminal class. So he made a mental note to ask the boy about his reasoning for accepting such a marking moniker for his chosen profession.

"Hey uh, is he okay?" Siegfried saw the straw hatted boy motion at the still snorting naval boy who was now attempting to make what may have been an accusatory gesture at the young man asking about his health.

Sanji gave the rice-impaired boy a cursory glance. "Yeah he should be fine be. But in response to your question, I can't join your crew, I have business that I still haven't finished here." He said.

This only seemed to affect Luffy's mood as much as a stray cloud on a sunny day would effect a plant, that is to say he was blooming with only slightly less enthusiasm than before.

"Really? How come?" He asked. Truth be told, Siegfried was himself rather interested in the conversation. It was hard to believe that just a few moments ago he'd thought that he would have to play the part of the negotiator between two wounded and starving sea farers and a chef that didn't seem like he reacted entirely the way he was supposed to the blend of fine herbs he'd given him. That latter part was something he was feeling particularly glad hadn't come up in a manner that he'd have to directly respond to yet.

As it stood, he had yet to form evidence sufficient to calm the young man's questions, and he'd never liked lying to well meaning people.

So for the moment, he was content to stand on the second deck and listen to the conversation going on below him and catalogue information.

Among several pieces of trivia about the owner of the sea-faring restaurant, most of which gained a soft inward smile as his beloved observation skills proved to still be proper working order by Sanji confirming much of what he'd gleaned from his little staring match with Zeff the other day, he managed to pick up one or two lines about why he was having to drag out his old set of carpenter's knowledge.

" _How on Earth do you turn self defence into a stray shot the way he did?_ " He thought to himself in response to Luffy's claims.

As the conversation slash argument wore on between the two young men, Siegfried found himself looking out at the sea and it's endless allure. He was almost forced to wince as he stared out at the line forming his vision's end of range as the sun glittered off this strange ocean's blue, had it really been that long since he was at sea? He found himself wondering.

Ah, but it was just as beautiful as he could remember in his best of memories. A shining stone of aquamarine and sapphire, that's what she was. He supposed an old sailor's longing for that wondrous deep blue never really left, as much as he'd found his Katherine's eyes fresh, forest water eyes to be as deep and beautiful as the sea on it's calmest days, if not more so, it seemed that the ocean's envious curse on the men that sailed her still attempted to haunt him. Even if this sea seemed an entirely different one.

It was that very thought that brought him back to his current reality, and that brought back those curious firearms that he'd seen on the lower deck before. So, not wishing to test the mettle of his legs again so soon, he took a more roundabout route than the one his apparent wood-working apprentice took.

" _Seems the dinning room's calmed down nicely. They must deal with things like this fairly often I suppose, if the given state of naval battles are being presented as factual in those old papers. Too many pirates and big-headed marines apparently._ " He thought as his route took him through the now normally running dining area.

When he managed to find his way through to the lower deck, a journey he was annoyed at himself forgetting to ask directions on a large ship he'd only been on a day, he saw that the scene was mainly the same, save for the fact that the overly bandaged marine boy seemed to have finally cleared his windpipe, and was nursing a rather large welt on his head. The older pirate with a headband was now standing in a small rowboat, and the conversation he was having between the duo of Luffy and Sanji seemed to be fairly benign from what The Professor could hear on the wind.

The dishes from the two recovery meals had also vanished.

Siegfried arrived at the group just in time to hear the tail-end of the conversation.

"-and again, no matter what, you've saved my life, and I won't forget that." The Headband pirate said to Sanji.

Sanji grinned. "You just make sure that you don't end up starving again, alight Gin?" Of course now that he was leaving, Siegfried had found out his name. The whims of convenience where often ill-timed it seemed.

Gin, as Siegfried now knew as all to frustratingly late, stopped for a second in his preparations to leave "What are you going to do with the him though? I can't imagine he'd be able to find his way at sea even if you gave him a boat after all." He said. The remark seemed to sting the younger man in question, however, the stinging of his head seemed to triumph over the other, and he remained seated, but grumbling.

Sanji casually glanced at the boy before grinning again. "Oh him? Well we keep running out of waiters, so maybe he could earn his keep for a bit while he's waiting for the next marine vessel to drop by." He said.

This seemed enough humiliation to actually make the young marine rise up from his sitting position, and from what Siegfried could see, was more like than not to earn himself another unsalaried wound.

Whether it was out of compassion for the young lad, or simply out of his old naval instincts, Siegfried decided that it would be best for all involved if he were to introduce himself into the conversation now.

And so, dragging out his best officer's voice from it's long resting place, playing cards and talking about how much better things were back in the day when he actually used them with his angry voice and his Italian voice, he spoke.

"Recruit! Fall in and present yourself, on the double sea-man!"

Hearing this was actually enough to unbalance the young man enough that he almost fell right on to his face, but with an impressive amount of bodily self control, he managed to right himself and snap back onto his feet with a proper salute. Though he winced as he was forced to bring his right arm to bear over his head.

"Sir! Sea-man recruit Forested Timothy reporting!" He respectfully yelled out.

However, instead of seeing lieutenant Fullbody or one of his petty-officers red in the face over his failure to respond or, presumably apprehend the now sailing away pirate, he instead saw a tall, kindly faced old man with a finely looked after grey-red beard and a very comfortable looking suit.

He smiled through his beard at the much younger man. "No need to panic my young friend. I only really have one question." He then had a rather confused look on his face. "Actually, make that three questions. Is that alright? Also, I'd like to apologize for startling you, I just thought it would be the best way to help you avoid getting yourself hurt… again I'm guessing?" He said in a low bass voice.

"Uh, um.. Sure?" He answered. Clearly the young man was not quite over his shock at not having to be forced under the scorn of his commanding officers

The Professor smiled brightly. "Excellent! Now then, first of all. You belonged to the ship under the command of that Fullbody fellow, yes?" He asked.

After sitting back down and going back to nursing his head, as well as his other wounds, the boy answered. "Well, yes. Or, I mean, I was. It looks like they took off without me though. We were supposed to be guarding the Pirate Gin to headquarters and- oh gosh darn it!" He shouted. For a sailor, he evidently didn't have curses of one, young as he was. "Why the heck did they leave the guy that was on no rations for a week to guard the prisoner?!" He smashed his head against the deck in frustration, then immediately regretted it as he remembered what kind of shape he was in.

The Professor was a bit taken aback. Of course, why else would he in a starved condition. Well that was two questions down for the price of one, which was almost always useful. Though the boy appeared to have a bit of a disposition towards looser lips than one would recommend for a young sailor. However, seeing the situation he was in, Siegfried could understand the boy's plight.

"Well then, if you don't mind we'll move on the second question. Could you tell me your name again?"

The boy raised the eyebrow that he wasn't picking splinters out of. "It's Forested Timothy, didn't you hear me the first time? I'm sorry if you didn't, I can try better next time!" He seemed very concerned for such a minor thing.

Suddenly something nearly clicked in The Professor's mind. He wasn't sure what, but he had a feeling it would come to him with the next question.

"Don't worry yourself, I was just a bit confused for a moment. Now for my third question, would you mind terribly if I took a look at your firearm? I know you should keep it to yourself, but-"

"Oh sure, have a look!" He said, interrupting The Professor's attempts to convince him against his better instincts to give his only weapon over to a stranger. Clearly, the boy was too naïve for his own good.

Upon inspecting the entirely too easily given up sidearm, Siegfried was, for an entire minute, stunned with surprise. The pistol was almost exactly the same as some of the early 1800's flintlock pistols that he had in his collection. The major observable difference of course, being that it was practically factory new. All of a sudden, that near clicked realisation hit him with the force that only a scenario like this can bring.

The sea's current's felt far different then they should have been.

Piracy was rampant and there was a world government.

People using different conventions of name order.

Pre-current century weapons being produced and given out as standards to a large united naval force.

And a boy who declared with the most pure passion he had ever heard someone speak with that he would be The Pirate King.

He truly was in another world.

And that realization couldn't be put off any longer.

"Hey Professor! Are you alright?" The Professor's trained mind was always poised to latch onto stable ground as soon as the possibility of snapping back to rational thinking presented itself, and Luffy's question presented that opportunity.

He shook his head lightly as he came back into awareness as he mechanically pocketed the pistol. To the meek protests of the injured Foreste- Timothy.

"Err, yes. Right, I'm fine thank you Monkey- I mean, Luffy. I believe now would be best for us to commence with the repairs." He walked over and began speaking to Sanji in a carefully managed volume. "Well I hope you take good care of Timothy here, I have reason to believe that he's been through a quite bit recently." He said.

The blond chef walked towards the injured marine recruit and, though Siegfried knew the young man was strong he was still quite impressed with the ease that he picked up the slightly younger boy and deposited him over his shoulder. Despite the slightly less meek protests of the crewman in his custody.

"Oh don't worry yourself there old man. C'mon, let's get you into a proper uniform before you go out. Can't have people wondering why there's a marine working here, it might spook the customers." He turned to The Professor. "Oi, and Old Man, You're going to have some explaining to do about that little pipe of yours. I ended up eating a ham meant for a party of two, and you're going to have to tell me why I just happened to do that little stunt. Okay?" He stated with as about as much menace as a man that was formerly speaking with a clothespin on his nose can, before walking off with the weakly grumbling Timothy in tow.

The Professor cleared his throat and stretched. For some reason it felt like he'd just woken up from a several month rest.

"Well then Luffy, come with me. I expect that with my teachings, you'll be learning the art of woodwork _swimmingly_ " He said pleasantly as they walked and bounced away to the new construction site respectively.

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 _The New World Journal of Prof. Siegfried E. R. Thorson._

 _Entry #1:_

' _Though I'm not exactly sure why I was expecting anything else-"_

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 **AN:**

" _ **And~~~~~~~ we're back! Whew, 105 followers, and 72 favourites as of the posting of this chapter! That's quite impressive for a relative newcomer to the**_ **One Piece** _ **fanfic community if I do say so myself. And I do! Not to toot my own horn too much though. I still remember my first two reviews, as I'm sure you do as well, Kaori and See-Me-Clearly."**_

" _ **Now on to the responses!"**_

" _ **Well Guest, I hope that little interlude tickled your fancy, but if it didn't, don't worry! The Straw Hats will be featured much more prominently very soon!"**_

" _ **Thanks again Book, your reveiews have always been very encouraging for me."**_

" _ **FIREmizuchi: Thank you, just thank you is all I can say to show how much I appreciate your review. Thank you."**_

" _ **To Soul's questions, well if you can get the name, you're halfway there for what I have planned for him. I'll tell you now though, he's not becoming a Straw Hat. One Original crew member is quite enough of a hassle as it is. And Soul? Sorry to tease you like that."**_

" _ **Thedudemanbro. First off, I like your name. Second, I won't tell either way, as I see you're privy to Bruno's little coin trick. You won't know if**_ **I** _ **have the taste of a liar! Giorono Giov-! You get me."**_

" _ **HeileWelt. I'm happy to please, I hope the next chapter lived up to your expectations. I get better the more writing I do, so I sometimes do a few touch-ups to the earlier bits."**_

" _ **Celeste D. Lilica, I really do hope that you liked the other chapters as much as you wanted to. I hope that you'll like these new ones even more."**_

" _ **Thus concludes the responses. I'll see you next chapter in:**_ **The Professor's Journal of Wonder!** _ **"**_

 _ **B. R. III.**_


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